The planet is giving warning as to what dangerous climate change looks like – from historic droughts in East Africa, the United States and Mexico, to catastrophic floods in Brazil and China, and heat waves in Europe and elsewhere. The spectre of worldwide food shortages is growing. These warnings are being ignored by governments whose current lack of ambition has the world heading towards 3.5-6°C of warming and runaway climate catastrophe.
Agreements at Durban opened a window of opportunity for governments to put the world on a low emissions pathway, ready to leverage clean technologies for green development and create green jobs, investment and economic development, and to take important steps to build resilience to unavoidable impacts of climate change. However this window of opportunity is precarious. Fulfilling it will require governments to take decisive action at COP18/CMP8 in Doha. Short term (pre-2020) ambition must be urgently increased and a clear pathway mapped to negotiate a fair, ambitious and binding deal in 2015.
Essential elements to be concluded at Doha include:
At Doha an ADP workplan to increase short term ambition must be agreed:
Parties must learn from the disaster at Copenhagen by mapping out an ADP workplan at COP18 with clear timelines, milestones and deadlines for agreeing key issues on the pathway to negotiate a fair, ambitious and binding global agreement in 2015. Key milestones are mapped on the following page. The ADP workplan to 2015 must be:
After the disaster of Copenhagen, leaders do not have another ‘trick up their sleeve’. Countries must deliver a fair, ambitious and binding deal by 2015 at the latest, putting in place the first steps in the pre 2020 ambition workplan in 2012, to ensure that we prevent catastrophic climate change. There is no atmospheric nor political space for a second failure.
The planet is giving warning as to what dangerous climate change looks like – from historic droughts in East Africa, the United States and Mexico, to catastrophic floods in Brazil and China, and heat waves in Europe and elsewhere. The spectre of worldwide food shortages is growing. These warnings are being ignored by governments whose current lack of ambition has the world heading towards 3.5-6°C of warming and runaway climate catastrophe.
Планета предостерегает относительно того, как выглядят опасные изменения климата - от исторически небывалой засухи в Восточной Африке, Соединенных Штатах и Мексике до катастрофических наводнений в Бразилии и Китае и аномальной жары в Европе и в других местах. Возрастает угроза нехватки продовольствия во всем мире. Правительства игнорируют эти предостережения, а отсутствие активных действий в настоящее время ведет мир к потеплению на 3.5-6 °C и неуправляемой климатической катастрофе.
El planeta está dando aviso de cuán peligroso se presenta el cambio climático, mostrando desde sequías históricas en África Oriental, Estados Unidos y México, a catastróficas inundaciones en Brasil y China, y olas de calor en Europa y otros lugares. Crece el fantasma de la escasez de alimentos en todo el mundo. Estas advertencias están siendo ignoradas por los gobiernos cuya actual falta de ambición está llevando al mundo en dirección a 3,5-6 °C de calentamiento y a una catástrofe climática fuera de todo control.
La planète ne cesse de nous montrer à quoi peut ressembler un changement climatique dangereux – les sécheresses historiques dans la Corne de l’Afrique, aux Etats-Unis et au Mexique, les inondations catastrophiques au Brésil et en Chine, les canicules en Europe et ailleurs. La menace d’une crise alimentaire mondiale se precise de plus en plus. Mais nos gouvernements continuent d’ignorer ces signaux alarmants en se contentant de nous placer sur une trajectoire de réchauffement de 3,5°C à 6°C et d’une future catastrophe climatique.
地球正在警告我们危险的气候变化会是什么样子——从 东非、美国和墨西哥史无前例的干旱，到巴西和中国的 灾难性的洪水，以及欧洲和其它地方的热浪。世界性的 粮食危机的阴影正在浮现。而那些缺乏减排雄心并引导 这个世界走向升温3.5到6度和失控的气候灾难的国家，还在漠视这些警示。
Download the file - which contains full details on:
Practical ideas and suggestions on how the ADP can advance its work, both towards delivering an effective post-2020 agreement and bridging the ambition gap in the pre-2020 period
How best to advance the work of the ADP in Doha and beyond
Topics or questions that could be used to focus substantive discussions in Doha or in future sessions, building upon the roundtable discussions in Bangkok
Equity questions:
Practical Ideas and Suggestions on how the ADP can advance its work on bridging the ambition gap in the pre-2020 period
At Doha an ADP workplan to increase short term ambition must be agreed:
We stand at the precipice of what could be the final stroke of the LCA at COP18 in Doha, and the conversation is turning ever more to the question of how political decisions for various elements of the LCA that have not been fully resolved will be handled post-COP18. ECO sees that the discussion on technology transfer, which cuts across mitigation and adaptation, provides a stark view of what's at stake if the LCA's closing is not properly done, in the light of the sometimes yawning gap between the understandings of developed and the developing countries.
If you mark the IPCC Assessment Report 1 (1990) as the starting point, the discussion on technology transfer has been ongoing for more than two decades. That’s a lot of work to sit idle if the Technology Mechanism suddenly faced a lack of support, and a staggering missed opportunity to close the mitigation gap and address the growing need for climate adaptation.
As it now stands, the Technology Mechanism lacks full funding even on a short-term basis, its governance and reporting structure are incomplete, its linkages with other bodies inside the Convention are hampered by the chicken/egg dilemma, its cross-cutting support for NAMAs and NAPAs/NAPs is uncertain and ill-defined, and the conversation on what is likely the most political decision of all – how priorities are to be set within the TEC and CTCN – has barely been broached, if at all. Undoubtedly, some of these issues will be addressed and hopefully resolved in Doha, but some of them have little or no hope of finding true resolution in that timeframe, and some are likely to require ongoing political guidance.
As for funding, which must stand above all other issues in terms of a critical path forward, the organisation requested by COP17 to financially support the early operations of the CTCN failed to be chosen, and CTCN support disappeared with the nomination.
So how do we avoid leaving the CTCN – the technology mechanism's "boots on the ground" – up in the air?
As the shaman of Pride Rock, Rafiki, says: "It is time." Let's get those boots grounded with at least five years of interim public funding and let's go kick some adaptation and mitigation bootie! Oh, and by the way, maybe we might also find a concrete way to ensure appropriate follow-up care for all the outstanding technology transfer and other LCA issues that risk being stranded?
ECO was pleasantly surprised by the tenor of interventions at the ADP roundtable on ambition Saturday. There was widespread acknowledgement that, as things currently stand, we are not on track for limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Many Parties lamented the lack of pre-2020 ambition, with one bright spark noting that failure to take decisive action in the short term has ominous implications for the post-2020 process.
In the words of one delegation “there is a serious gap”. This echoes what scientists have been telling us for some time now. In its “Bridging the Emissions Gap” report published at the end of 2011, UNEP undertook a systematic assessment of the size of what we should by rights be calling the Multi-Gigatonne Gap, concluding that it is in the range of 6-11 Gt.
So even under the most conservative assessment, which assumes perfect implementation of countries’ current pledges, the world is on a pathway to emit 50 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent per year by 2020, instead of the needed 44 gigatonnes or less. This analysis is backed up by a whole host of studies, so it seems the science is pretty solid. We think the sheer scale of the gap should have countries setting up Emergency Emissions Reductions Crisis Centres (ECO would abbreviate them EEKKs! if it were in charge).
One reason for optimism is that as huge as the Multi-Gigatonne Gap is, UNEP estimates that emission reductions of between 14 to 20 Gt of CO2-equivalent are possible by 2020 and without any significant technical or financial breakthroughs needed. What is more, the costs incurred by these reductions would not be prohibitive. That sounds like a win-win situation to us.
So what exactly can countries do to stave off impending global meltdown (unfortunately, we are not talking figuratively here)? As it turns out, there’s rather a large menu of options to choose from. Many actions could be implemented with immediate effect, using existing frameworks outside the UNFCCC. The phase out of HFCs is an excellent case in point. Agreeing to a consumption and production phase-out of these super greenhouse gases under the Montreal Protocol, with cost-effective alternatives made available to developing countries, would avoid a whopping 88-140 gigatonnes/CO2e emissions by 2050 at a very reasonable price – the near-term emissions savings would also be sizeable. This approach was recently endorsed by the nations of the world at the Rio+20 Conference – all it would take now is for Parties to the UNFCCC to do the same, thereby freeing themselves up to tackle other challenges.
Other, equally crucial initiatives countries should undertake include addressing international emissions from aviation and shipping, which together account for a massive 5% of global CO2 emissions, abolishing fossil fuel subsidies and closing the huge loopholes in the current commitments (did you know that up to 13 billion surplus AAUs could make their way into the Kyoto Protocol’s next commitment period?) to name but a non-exhaustive few.
With such a long shopping list of potential measures to chose from, there really is no excuse for inaction.
The Leadership Development Program (LDP) is one of CAN’s cornerstone programs that aims to strengthen its national and regional nodes and build professional leadership within the network....
