ECO has noticed that there’s a lot of talk in the UNFCCC meetings about what countries will promise, pledge, commit to, and otherwise say that they’re really, really going to do.
Much less frequently do we hear that countries are actually achieving emissions reductions. That adds to the pleasure of seeing the announcement yesterday that Brazil’s deforestation rate...

Forest management is surely as important as everyone knows, but peatlands that have been drained for agriculture and other purposes are also important emissions hotspots globally.
Yet incentives for Annex I countries to reduce these emissions under the Kyoto Protocol were minimal in the first commitment period. In fact, accounting for land use activities associated with the drainage...

Remember the Gigatonne Gap? It’s the gap of 9 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent between country pledges in the Copenhagen Accord and the emission reductions needed to avoid a temperature increase above 2o C.
A new UNEP report shows that many potential measures already exist to help close the gap, some of which are at stake at this COP.  The report demonstrates the feasibility of...

As we eagerly anticipate the release of an actual LCA mitigation text, ECO is confident that it is realistic to expect substantial progress here in Cancun.
The new text will need to tackle some very controversial issues. One of the biggest debates currently underway is the inscription of emission pledges by parties. Not only does the magnitude of the pledges determine of the size of...