Tag: LCA

It’s vital this week to make progress on mitigation matters. But don’t forget that for a large proportion of the world’s population, adaptation is vital too – and the slower large emitters move on mitigation, the greater the importance of adaptation.
There are two key issues that should progress this week. Current emission pledges are steering us towards a world where temperatures could, within this century, reach 4^o C above pre-industrial levels.
The implications are dire: there will be unavoidable impacts resulting from environmental changes that cannot be prevented nor adapted to. They include sea-level rise, glacial retreat, ocean acidification, large scale loss of biodiversity, and land and forest degradation.
These impacts will leave the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities with destroyed homes, livelihoods and natural resources, and lead to large areas of the world becoming uninhabitable.
These are two key issues that have eluded agreement so far in the adaptation negotiations. First, this week Parties must agree a mandate for work towards enhanced understanding of loss and damage, with a work programme, including workshops, to develop the modalities of the mechanism, leading toward approval at COP17.
Another key issue is to ensure that the text only refers to adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change. We welcome the removal of response measures in Chapter II (Adaptation) of the LCA Chair’s most recent text (CRP.2).  Response measures relates to the adverse impacts of climate change mitigation, for example, decreased GDP in oil producing countries as a result of decreased oil consumption following a shift to low carbon economies.  This should not soak up funds needed to protect those who are most at risk from climate change.
Because of the clear difference between these two issues, it is not appropriate to include response measures in adaptation – especially as they are already addressed appropriately in the mitigation text (Chapter III, Section F). Developed countries will not deliver adaptation funding for the Adaptation Framework unless response measures are kept out of the adaptation text.  
In this area of the negotiations at least, the right choices will produce a simple and direct way to protect all people, especially those most exposed to dangerous climate change.

The phrases ‘legal form’ and ‘anchoring of pledges’ are on everyone’s lips in the corridors and sidewalks of the Moon Palace. While these are indeed crucial issues, like many of the Parties who spoke at Saturday’s stocktaking plenaries, ECO wants to see serious work this week on mitigation content for both the KP and LCA.
Looking first at the KP, if Parties are not able to fully agree a second commitment period here in Cancun, there must be at least a clear deadline and process to ensure that this will happen in Durban. Further agreement on some of the thorny details of the KP like the rules on LULUCF and surplus AAUs are also keenly awaited.  
As regards the individual and aggregate Annex I targets for the second commitment period, there has been a lot of talk about how and where they will be recorded. But what about the minor matter of what the numbers actually are, and whether they bear any relation to science?
The new text has put the need for developed country targets to add up to at least 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 in brackets.  The KP negotiating mandate towards Durban must include an explicit requirement that both aggregate and individual country pledges be clarified and assessed against this 25-40% figure, and their level of ambition increased accordingly in the final KP second commitment period agreement.  
And don’t forget, there are two tracks in these negotiations.  For the sake of balance the non-KP Annex 1 Parties (primarily, of course, the US) must take on comparable commitments to the KP Annex I Parties.  
The Chair’s text provides some workable openings for this, though it needs significant enhancement. Several options are given for the listing of pledges, but ECO’s most serious concern is that wherever they end up, there must be a clear acknowledgement in the relevant COP decision that they fall far short of what science requires – creating the Gigatonne Gap that was highlighted in the UNEP Emissions Gap Report.  
Unlike the KP, the LCA text does not so far include an explicit reference to the quantity of emissions reductions entailed by the goal of keeping global temperature increase well below 2^o C, let alone 1.5^o. That should be an immediate priority.
Acknowledgment of the inadequacy of the current pledges should be accompanied by a clear process to elaborate and facilitate the measures that will help to close the gap. The Chair’s text neatly includes a cross-reference to the KP, and if the KP Parties’ pledges are strengthened as set out above, they will contribute appropriately to the overall goal.
This leaves the pledges of developing countries and of the US. There should be agreement in Cancun on a mandate for next year’s negotiations under which the US will take on its fair and comparable share, and developing country pledges for nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be clarified and adequately supported.  
ECO was very pleased to see that low emission development strategies are mentioned in the Chair’s text. Such long-term strategic plans are needed to ensure the global goal is actually met, although there is room for elaborating the scope and nature of the strategies for developed countries. Agreement to all this would be a very positive signal of the seriousness of intent by developed countries.
Climate change demands that we keep a constant eye on what science is telling us and on the adequacy of our agreed actions. The review set out in in Chapter V of the Chair’s text provides a channel for this.  The re-inclusion of the 1.5^o C global goal in welcome, although the proposed completion of this work only in 2015 is alarming.  We know that emissions must already peak by then.  In addition, it is not clear is how the results of the review would be operationalised into the updating of both the aggregate and individual country targets, another point to be addressed before we leave Mexico.
There is a lot of work to do this week, but Parties noted on Saturday their desire to see this centrepiece of the negotiations addressed.   Now is the time to stand and deliver.

Dear Ministers, it’s ECO again.  We welcome your early arrival and commitment to a global agreement on climate change!
Your delegations have been working hard. In front of you are choices that have been clearly laid out by delegates with the assistance of your capable LCA Chair and facilitators. We trust that you bring flexibility and a strong desire to agree options that are sufficiently ambitious to ensure a successful outcome this week.
Which raises the question, what does success at Cancun look like?  First and foremost, COP 16 must provide substance and direction toward a fair, ambitious and binding deal at Durban in 2011. Trust and commitment in the UNFCCC process will be reinvigorated if Parties act together and the public sees this process producing what the world expects –  a legally binding deal in Durban.
The result in Cancun must be completely clear that a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol will be finalised and agreed at Durban along with a legally binding outcome in the LCA track.
To be sure, the emission reduction pledges presently on the table are insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change. Cancun should acknowledge the gap of 5 to 9 gigatonnes that the UNEP has spotlighted, and establish a process to strengthen the pledges by Durban.  
Recall also, the Bali Action Plan acknowledged the target range of 25-40% reductions by 2020 for developed countries.  But the science has moved since then, and we now know that even more mitigation is needed. Your citizens will not accept a Durban deal that locks in the current low levels of mitigation and the disastrous climate change that would ensue.
Clearly there are other elements of success needed here. Adaptation, technology, capacity building, surplus AAUs, REDD+ and more – all must make significant steps forward. There is no excuse for these issues to be held hostage to narrow political agendas and miscalculated national interest.
Instead, it is in every nation’s interest to agree an ambitious climate deal. Serious 
action will not only save the vulnerable countries, but provide economic, social and environmental benefits for us all.
Establishing a fair climate fund, with sufficient content in the text for it to be realised, is the minimum level of expectation from you in regard to climate finance. The negotiations also need a clear indication that the required scale of finance will be forthcoming, from guaranteed public sources such as the innovative sources of climate finance identified in the Advisory Group on Finance (AGF) report.
Ministers: your task here is not simple and it is not easy. All the same, it is essential. It is essential to restore faith in this process, to restore credibility to your governments, and to secure a real future of all of us.