Category Archives: COP25

This Is [Not] The End

The diplomats who run UNFCCC climate negotiations are fond of doing what they call a “stock take” every once in a while. As we wait and wait for the final COP25 plenary to begin, a day into overtime, let’s do the same.

We came to Madrid with the situation in Chile in our minds and hearts. We have tried to echo the demands of the streets in the halls of power, as have many others.

At every opportunity we told the COP25 Presidency that we stand in solidarity with the movements in Chile. We supported their demand that Chile stop all repression of peaceful protestors, and take responsibility for human rights violations committed. We also supported calls for the government to establish a constituent assembly.

Chilean movements are clear in their opposition to an economic system which creates and perpetuates inequality. The same system is pouring fuel on the flames of the climate crisis – all around the world.

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COP cazeloraso

We marched with 500,000 others against such a system.

And we took the anger of the streets into the halls of power. Because as climate justice movements we are for the many, not the few.

For this the UN security ripped our banners away, shouted at us and kettled us. Over 300 of us were pushed outside, into the cold, before finally being taken outside the venue, to a militarised police escort, before being split up and made to wait.

This all happened a matter of hours after Greta Thunberg gave a powerful speech to the conference, in which she said:

In just three weeks we will enter a new decade. This coming decade will define our future. Right now we are desperate for any sign of hope. Well I am telling you there is hope. I have seen it. But it does not come from governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

Of course this wasn’t the first or last action that we took.

No Ambition

Arriving in Madrid we knew that time is running out. A new decade is weeks away. We lamented the loss of the previous decade to inaction and distraction.

We hoped that when countries took stock of their climate actions prior to 2020 they would see the shocking gulf between what they’ve done what what they needed to have done. And then *do* something about it. But just like in 2014, 2016, and 2018, we sat through yet another pointless talk-shop. Neither the COP President nor the UNFCCC offered a process for this ‘stock take’ to lead to anything concrete.

Developing countries proposed to set up a work programme to properly examine the actions taken during pre-2020 period and bridge the “implementation gap.”

It’s good to see a few more people here than at the technical pre-2020 stocktake. Tellingly the room is a lot less crowded that the plenary with Greta this morning. Priorities, right?

In that plenary we heard for the umpteenth time that we have an extremely limited amount of time in which to completely transform our economy and societies.

We’ve already glimpsed the horrors that await us if we don’t – a world on fire and battered by storms. An even less equitable world, less able to react properly to this emergency.

What we haven’t seen is any serious response. Developed countries were supposed to lead but have done next to nothing since 1990. UNEP talks about a lost decade; we should actually talk about 3 lost decades.

It is very hard to build trust with broken promises. I said it at the last plenary: it is a joke that 7 years after it was agreed, Parties have still not ratified the Doha Amendment. The Paris Agreement was ratified in under a year.

We enter the Paris Agreement carrying the failings of the recent past and present. Both mitigation and finance has been wholly inadequate in pre-2020, and sets us up for post-2020 action which will be more challenging, and less fair. 

So here’s a question: How can we expect anything from the Paris Agreement if pre-2020 agreements have been cast aside? 

Here’s another: what’s the point of distant, loophole-ridden, false-zero 2050 targets such as the UK’s, when pre-2020 action has been forgotten? Today’s leaders won’t be alive, let alone in power in 2050. We know your 2050 pledges are just more lies.

For these reasons, we echo the proposal by LMDC, supported by Africa Group, Arab group, and others, for COP25 to mandate a work programme on closing the pre-2020 implementation gaps on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, and capacity building and to close those gaps. We need more ideas like this.

We don’t need any more conversations or reflections. Do your fair share.

No Accountability

We have another potentially useful tool to assess and hold northern countries accountable for the climate action they have or haven’t taken before 2020. It’s called the 2nd Periodic Review. The last report of this kind produced language about 1.5 and 2 degrees goals which eventually made its way into the Paris Agreement.

But developed countries were aware of this and made proposals which would make the 2nd Review yet another meaningless talk-shop. The US proposed to cancel the review, and when that was not a viable option proposed to narrow the scope to just science. The EU tried to remove the words “assess” and “adequacy” from the text.

Instead the text includes a very watered down phase, “aggregate effect,” which could mean individual country’s commitments can’t be singled out. So there’s no way to hold polluters to account.

“Article 6”

The main course for the past 2 weeks, leaving us all with indigestion, was a re-heated dish called “Article 6.” Or, as it has come to be known, “how to pollute more and get away with it” (for background, read above).

Article 6 emerged from negotiations on how countries could work together to reduce emissions. But many polluting countries have fixated on carbon trading and offsetting. Which is frustrating, as these approaches have failed to reduce carbon emissions, and have detrimentally impacted human rights while simultaneously commodifying nature.

These discussions are highly contentious and highly complex. This issue nearly scuppered the COP24 last year in Poland and could potentially do so for real this time. Under pressure to reach any agreement, countries risk landing on a bad agreement. In such a case we think that no deal is better.

Some of the main issues of contention, still unresolved at 4am on Sunday 15 December, are:

  • whether or not to include language about respecting human rights, indigenous rights, and gender safeguards
  • whether or not to carry over carbon credits from a previous trading scheme
  • whether or not to allow for carried credits to be sold or used by the country that generated them
  • how to conduct “corresponding adjustments” to countries emissions’ data after a trade, in order to avoid “double counting” of emissions reductions
  • whether or not to include metrics other than reductions in greenhouse gases in the mechanism
  • whether or not to allow for all forms of greenhouse gas removal, rather than merely “removals by sinks”
  • how to take the conversation forward on “non-market approaches” to collaboration
  • whether or not some “share of proceeds” from profit generated by the new mechanism would go towards the Adaptation Fund
  • whether or not some of the emission reductions generated through the mechanism remain unused by any entity to compensate other emissions, to achieve “overall reduction in global emissions.”

On Friday night the “landing zone” for these questions resembled a sort of crash-site. Human rights are probably in, but in an annex. We think that either carry overs or double counting will make it in. But the countries basically do not agree at all and everyone is saying they won’t back down.

Loss and damage refers to how we deal with the impacts of climate breakdown that are already happening and cannot be avoided. Sudden disasters and slow onset events like droughts lead to loss of lives and livelihoods, but also loss and heritage and culture.

Negotiators disappeared behind closed doors early on and stayed there. Developing countries were very active and put forward their ideas in writing. This directed discussions more towards concrete implementation than ever before. Many civil society groups also advanced the idea of setting up a loss and damage finance facility.

However, rich countries repeatedly blocked loss and damage finance. The US in particular played a lead role in wrecking this lifeline plan for the world’s poor. They proposed to insert a no liability or compensation clause into the Paris Agreement. This would give historical polluters blanket protection against any liability and compensation claims.

The proposal was too hot to leave to technical negotiators and so went to the COP25 Presidency to sort out at a higher level.

The small islands made a rather weak proposal which didn’t include a finance facility. Instead they asked for a ‘window’ under the Green Climate Fund (one of the UNFCCC’s multilateral funding mechanisms). Other proposals watered down demands for “new and additional” finance from the historic polluter countries – seemingly in exchange for getting sort term relief on the ground.

Eventually they produced a draft text that would:

  • Establish a long-overdue “Expert Group” by 2020
  • Establish a “Santiago Network” to catalyse technical assistance
  • Contain no language on new and additional finance
  • “Urge” developed nations to “scale up” finance
  • Refer to available finance rather than generating new and additional finance
  • Ask for loss and damage finance to come from the Green Climate Fund (GCF)

This last point is a problem because it “cuts the same cake into more pieces”. Diverting money from the GCF also means eating into adaptation finance and ultimately exposing more people to climate disasters.

Developed countries persisted in opposing the need to have a discussion on long-term finance. As far as they are concerned it ends in 2020 even though the Paris Agreement extends it to 2025. Developing countries made a big stink towards the end of COP and made frequent mention of finance in the plenaries.

Total Breakdown

All of the above issues were unresolved by the scheduled end time. The talks rolled on to Saturday amid a subdued atmosphere. No glimpse of an agreement was on the horizon. Scheduled closing plenaries disappeared from screens. The Presidency announced a final stock taking session for Saturday morning. Then Saturday evening, then midnight, then 3.30am Sunday. None of them were followed by a closing plenary.

The mood turned sour and those civil society who were left issued ever more alarming soundbites to the even fewer remaining journalists.

The blame is clear.

We held a space to represent the views of the people of the world. Not the governments.

At the time of writing (4am Sunday morning) the negotiations are still ongoing. Countries are hell bent on avoiding a no-deal. None of them want to deal with the fallout. Copenhagen has traumatised them as it traumatised us.

But the agreements are hard to come by. Finance, loss and damage, article 6, and the COP decision itself are all stuck. The Presidency keeps drafting new texts based on inputs but when the inputs are contradictory, trust is at an all-time low and the diplomacy skills are weak, what chance is there of success?

We will present the final decisions, if indeed Parties arrive at any, and explain what they mean as soon as we can.

High-Level Speech

You sit here year after year claiming to work toward solutions while around the world real human beings lose their homes, their livelihoods, and their lives in this emergency. This process benefits a greedy few and ignores the many who know how to live in harmony with this planet.

The united science shows we need deep emissions cuts starting NOW and deepening each year. We must go beyond zero and transition into a new world defined by compassion, cooperation, and equity.

Instead, the polluters propose to keep polluting and plundering in the same way they have for centuries. But now they propose to “offset” these offenses with approaches that harm indigenous communities — the very people who hold many of the solutions. 

Entire communities are being wiped out. Entire countries are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. And you are talking about prolonging our dependency on fossil fuels, instead of supporting those who have done nothing to cause this crisis but who are already suffering. 

People often apologize to me – for my generation having to pick up the pieces as this planet is torn apart. But a few measly, mumbled words are not enough. It is not enough to talk about the climate emergency. Only a profound and equitable transformation is enough. Only then will the apology be accepted. System change not climate change!

Speech delivered by Zoe Ernst from College of the Atlantic and Earth in Brackets

Statement on COP25

Big Polluters and Northern countries are throwing gasoline on the fire of the climate crisis, knowingly paving the way for even more fossil fuels

To endorse this statement, sign on here. **Español abajo**

Before COP25 even began, it was clear that Big Polluters — including the fossil fuel, agriculture, forestry, and carbon market industries — plan to lock the world into catastrophic warming in the next few years.  Intended fossil fuel expansion by 2030 is at least 50% beyond a 2C target and 120% beyond what may be compatible with the global commitment to limit heating to 1.5C. The vast majority of this expansion is projected to come from the U.S. and Canada.  

Big Polluters brought their agenda straight to the halls of the U.N. at COP25. With the help of governments like the U.S., EU, Australia, Canada, and others historically most responsible for the climate crisis, these polluters are strategically advancing rather than protecting against this deadly agenda:

  • They want to use carbon markets to “offset” rather than cut emissions, by commodifying nature and shifting burdens through carbon trading to the South — burdens that will be disproportionately forced onto and violate the rights of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and frontline communities. 
  • Polluting countries and corporations are pushing so-called “nature-based solutions,” which could be a euphemism for large scale biomass burning, carbon storage technologies, the commodification of the ocean, and carbon trading and offsets, that will displace food production and force continued deforestation.
  • Seemingly innocuous language on metrics could open the door to the most dangerous geo-engineering technologies by spraying sulfur into the Earth’s atmosphere to block some sunlight from reaching the planet. 

The result of all of this is that food security and the integrity of biodiverse ecosystems would simultaneously be threatened by climate change, by carbon trading projects, and by large-scale geo-engineered disruption of the planet. All this so that Big Polluters can continue digging up, burning, and profiting from fossil fuels.

These polluters know they are wreaking havoc on the planet but seek to extract as much profit as possible in the near term with the vain idea that their wealth will protect them from the impacts of planetary breakdown.

That’s why, in addition to all the above, they are seeking to avoid any liability for this deliberate destruction by attempting to expand a waiver against liability and block compensation and finance in discussions that are designed to protect the communities on the frontlines from harmful impacts: loss and damage.

If these proposals – being rammed through by polluting governments and the corporate interests they are serving – are packaged into a “deal” at the close of this COP, it will surely be a deal only for the corporate elites, while damning people and the planet. Such a deal would completely disregard best agreed science, including that presented by the IPCC.  It would condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters. And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5. 

Experts have now assessed that the existential threat of climate change impacts surpasses that of weapons of mass destruction. We need bold, transformative and immediate action: We must prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels. We must fast track a just and peaceful transition to a safe, healthy and sustainable future for all. We must make Big Polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused.

It is not too late for governments to change the outcomes of COP25. In these final hours, it is not too late for developing countries to stand strong, to resolutely refuse the agenda of polluters. The need is clear: Advance real solutions, not carbon markets. Ensure developed countries provide funds and technology to help avert and minimize the worst impacts of climate change. Respect gender, youth and human rights, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples. And, recognizing that these polluters have known full well the harms they’ve caused, protect the right of sovereign nations to hold them liable. 

From the Amazon to the Arctic, our world is on fire. Allowing expansion of coal, oil and gas production at this moment of history is throwing gasoline on the fire. 

ActionAid International
Aksi! Indonesia
Alliance for Future Generations – Fiji
ALTSEAN
Les Amis de la Terre Togo
Arctic Youth Sweden
Articulación de Movimientos Sociales de Nicaragua
Artivist Network
ASEED Europe
Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development
Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas
Asociación Cubana de Producción Animal
Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agrícolas y Forestales
Asociación filosófica de artes marciales songahm, Uruguay 
Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba
Athens County Fracking Action Network
BankTrack
Center for Biological Diversity
Centre for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka
Centro Ecosocial Latinoamericano 
Centro Félix Varela
CIET-Uruguay
CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network)
CLEAN Kulna Bangladesh
Climate Justice Edmonton
Climate Justice Programme
The Climate Reality Project América Latina
Climate Watch Thailand
CliMates
Coalición México Salud-Hable
Colectivo Pro Derechos Humanos, PRODH-Ecuador
Colectivo Viento Sur
Collectif Breakfree – Switzerland
Collectif Senegalais des Africaines pour la Promotion de l’Education Relative a l’Environnement (COSAPERE)
Comisión Nacional Permanente de Lucha Antitabáquica – COLAT
Consejo de Iglesias de Cuba
Corporate Accountability
Corporate Europe Observatory
CUBASOLAR
Dakota Water Walk and Ride
Diko Bigas Institute Nepal
Earth in Brackets
EarthWorks
Eco Justice Valandovo
Ecologistas en Acción
Educar Consumidores
Energy and Climate Policy Institute for Just Transition
ENLACES por la Sustentabilidad
Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
ETC Group
FIC Argentina
FESAR-Ecuador
Fiji Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (FYSA)
Foro de Salud Pública, Ecuador
Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Friends of the Earth Europe
Friends of the Earth International
Friends of the Earth Scotland
Frontera Water Protection Alliance
Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Argentina)
Fundación Ellen Riegner de Casas
Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer 
Fundación Salud Ambiente y Desarrollo, FUNSAD, Ecuador
Fundeps-Argentina
Gastivists
GenderCC-Women for Climate Justice
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance 
Green Course
Health of Mother Earth Foundation
Indian Social Action Forum
Indigenous Environmental Network – International
International Centre for Climate Change and Development
International Economic OrganizationWorld Distribution Federation
Karavali Karnataka Janabhivridhi Vedike
Krisoker Sor Farmers’ Voice
Landesa (Rural Development Institute)
LEDARS Bangladesh 
March for Science
Mesa Colombiana de Incidencia por las Enfermedades Crónicas (MECIEC)
MOCICC-Peru
Mom Loves Taiwan Association
National Association of Professional Environmentalists
National Hawkers Federation India
NGO Defensoría Ambiental
Oil Change International
Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico, (CLOC – LVC, Caribe)
People’s Coalition on the Right to Water Indonesia (KRuHA)
Planète Amazone
Plataforma Boliviana frente al Cambio Climático
El Poder del Consumidor, México
Proyectando un Ambiente y Sociedad Verde A.C.
Redhawk Native American Arts Council
Red Uruguaya ONGs Ambientalistas
Redrum Motorcycle Club
RENATA-Costa Rica
Sacred Stone
Salud Justa Mx- México
Schaghticoke First Nations
Seeding Sovereignty
Semilla Warunkwa
SERUNI Indonesia
Servicios Ecuménicos para Reconciliación y Reconstrucción
Sierra Club BC
Sociedad Amigos del Viento (Uruguay)
Sociedad Cubana para la Promoción de las fuentes renovables de energía y respeto ambiental
Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries
Südwind
Sukaar welfare organization Pakistan
SustainUS
Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services
UKYCC
United Confederation of Taíno People
La Via Campesina
War on Want
What Next Forum
Women Engage for a Common Future
Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)
Women’s March Global
World March of Women – Switzerland
World Peace and Prayer Day
Young European Greens
Young Friends of the Earth Macedonia
Youth Volunteers for the Environment
350.org

Declaración conjunta de la sociedad civil sobre la COP25

Los grandes contaminadores y los países del norte están arrojando gasolina al fuego de la crisis climática, abriendo deliberadamente el camino para aún más combustibles fósiles.

Incluso antes de que comenzara la COP25, estaba claro que los grandes contaminadores, incluidas las industrias de combustibles fósiles, agricultura, silvicultura y mercados de carbono, planean condenar al mundo a un calentamiento catastrófico en los próximos años. Los planes de expansión de la industria de combustibles fósiles para el 2030 nos llevaría al menos a 50% por encima del objetivo de 2˚C y a 120% más de lo compatible con el compromiso global de limitar el calentamiento en 1.5˚C. Se prevé que la gran mayoría de esta expansión provenga de los EE.UU. Y Canadá.

Los grandes contaminadores trajeron su agenda directamente a los pasillos de la ONU en la COP25. Con la ayuda de gobiernos como Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Australia, Canadá y otros históricamente responsables de la crisis climática. Estos contaminadores en lugar de proteger, están avanzando estratégicamente esta agenda mortal :

  • Quieren utilizar los mercados de carbono para “compensar” en lugar de reducir las emisiones, mediante la mercantilización de la naturaleza y através del comercio de carbono hacia el Sur, mecanismos que se traducirán en violaciones desproporcionadas de los derechos de las mujeres, los jóvenes, los pueblos indígenas y las comunidades en primera línea.
  • Los países y corporaciones contaminantes están impulsando las llamadas “soluciones basadas en la naturaleza”, que puede ser un eufemismo para la quema de biomasa a gran escala, las tecnologías de almacenamiento de carbono y las compensaciones para el comercio de carbono, que competirán con la producción de alimentos y fomentarán la deforestación.
  • Quieren ir aún más lejos y abrir la puerta a las peligrosas tecnologías de geoingeniería para rociar azufre en la atmósfera de la Tierra para evitar que el calor del sol llegue al planeta.

Como resultado, la seguridad de alimentos y la integridad de los ecosistemas biodiversos se verán amenazados simultáneamente por el cambio climático, por los proyectos de comercio de carbono y por la disrupción de la geoingeniería a escala planetaria. Todo esto para que los grandes contaminadores puedan continuar extrayendo, quemando y haciendo lucro de los combustibles fósiles.

Estos contaminadores saben que están causando estragos en el planeta, pero buscan extraer la mayor cantidad de ganancias posibles a corto plazo con la vana idea de que su riqueza los protegerá de los impactos del colapso planetario.

Es por eso que, además de todo lo anterior, buscan evitar cualquier responsabilidad por esta destrucción deliberada al fomentar una exención contra la responsabilidad y bloquear la idea de compensación y financiamiento en las discusiones de Daños y Perdidas, que están diseñadas para proteger a las comunidades en la primera línea de los impactos destructivos.

Si estas propuestas, producto de la captura corporativa de los gobiernos, se materializan en un “acuerdo” al finalizar esta COP, será, sin lugar a duda, un acuerdo solo para las élites corporativas, mientras que condenará a los pueblos y al planeta. Tal acuerdo ignoraría por completo las recomendaciones de la ciencia, incluida la presentada por el IPCC. Condenaría a los que están en la primera línea de la crisis climática, mientras oculta los crímenes de los contaminadores. Y conduciría a un aumento de la desigualdad y no a un aumento de la ambición climática, sin reducciones de emisiones reales y sin un camino hacia 1.5˚C.

Los expertos han aseverado que la amenaza existencial que el cambio climático representa, supera la de las armas de destrucción masiva. Necesitamos medidas audaces, transformadoras e inmediatas: debemos evitar la proliferación de los combustibles fósiles. Debemos acelerar una transición justa y pacífica hacia un futuro seguro, saludable y sostenible para todos. Debemos hacer que los grandes contaminadores paguen por el daño que han causado.

No es demasiado tarde para que los gobiernos cambien los resultados de la COP25. En estas últimas horas, no es demasiado tarde para que los países en desarrollo se mantengan firmes y rechacen decididamente la agenda de los contaminadores. La necesidad es clara: avanzar en soluciones reales, no en mercados de carbono. Asegurar que los países desarrollados proporcionen recursos financieros y tecnología para ayudar a evitar y minimizar los peores impactos del cambio climático. Respetar los derechos de género, jóvenes y humanos, incluyendo los derechos de los pueblos inígenos. Y, reconociendo que estos contaminadores conocen bien los daños que han causado, proteger el derecho soberano de las naciones a responsabilizarlos.

Desde el Amazonas hasta el Ártico, nuestro mundo está en llamas. Permitir la expansión de la producción de carbón, petróleo y gas en este momento de la historia es arrojar gasolina al fuego.

WTF: Where’s The Finance?

A measly $100 billion

In 2009, rich countries agreed to deliver $100 billion per year by 2020. They did so in recognition of their undeniable and overwhelming share of historical pollution. Hillary Clinton plucked the $100 billion figure from thin air, presumably because she thought it sounded like a lot. In fact $100 billion pales in comparison to the real needs which developing countries have to cope with climate change while developing sustainably. 

To deliver their conditional pledges of the Paris Agreement, poor nations would require $4 trillion in funding from rich countries. And, as we know, the Paris Agreement represents the baseline of ambition rather than the extent. 

Every COP since 2009 has reiterated the $100 billion goal, but over time the language has been watered down. Developed countries have changed the wording from “deliver” to “mobilise” and then “leverage.” These words sound synonymous but are not. The subtle differences in wording mean a huge difference in policy. What percentage of climate finance will be grant-based vs. loans? Using “leverage” is a less serious commitment as you are not promising to stump up the cash yourself. 

Academics have contested the methodology used by rich countries to demonstrate their progress towards this goal. And developing countries have long stressing that their finance needs are far from being met from any source. With things as they stand, they cannot implement their climate actions. 

Where is the finance?

So to build trust at COP25, rich countries must show developing countries that they will scale up life saving funds. It’s not looking good in that regard. The Green Climate Fund, set up to support developing countries in their climate actions including adaptation, was recently promised $9.7 billion for its second replenishment. This falls short of the pledge of $10.7 billion that the GCF secured in its initial phase. Trump has not only withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement; he has withdrawn $2 billion that Obama pledged. Australia has also refused to contribute. 

The loss of this $2 billion undermines the agreement made at last year’s COP24. In Katowice countries agreed that developed countries will “continue their efforts to channel a substantial share of public climate funds to adaptation activities and to strive to achieve a greater balance between finance for mitigation and adaptation.”

Stumping up the cash is not a nice thing that rich countries do. It is their moral and, perhaps more importantly, their legal obligation. They are trying to escape this responsibility by changing the language and blurring the lines between themselves and developing countries. Rich countries do not want to be identified as rich. They would like to hide the fact that they are rich because of centuries of plunder and pollution. And they would like for poor countries to pay for the climate crisis despite not causing it. 

A New Goal

In Madrid, developing countries will be fighting for new and adequate finance in several fora. One critical battleground is on long-term finance. The Paris Agreement extended the $100 billion/year by 2020 goal to 2025. But countries have not agreed on a future goal beyond that. Last year in Poland they agreed to begin a process to set a new collective goal over $100 billion. In June they discussed the matter in a workshop and will now consider the report from that workshop. In another they’ll discuss the “effectiveness” and “provision” of finance – how much money is flowing and what good it’s doing. 

Developed countries are, as expected, against talking about long-term finance. They are resisting any move to assess their finance contributions. At the same time, they will try to restrict certain developing countries from accessing funds. The US has already tried to block Iran, China and Palestine from accessing finance from the GCF and GEF. 

The Great Escape

Now the developed countries also want to change the membership of the Adaptation Fund Board. The Adaptation Fund is for developing countries to directly access funding for adaptation. It was created under the Kyoto Protocol and is much beloved of developing countries despite being chronically underfunded. 

The Fund gets its resources via a “share of proceeds” from the Clean Development Mechanism. Countries agreed last year that the Fund would now serve the Paris Agreement exclusively, and any country which is a Party to the Agreement is eligible to sit on the Board. A consequence of serving the Paris Agreement is that the Fund will depend on a share of proceeds from the new Sustainable Development Mechanism, once in operation. 

As part of their Great Escape agenda, developed countries want to re-write the composition of the Board. They want more developed country representation for starters. But they also want to remove the reference to “Annex I” and “non-Annex I” countries. These terms refer to developed and developing countries respectively and signal the differentiated responsibility each set of countries has. 

Finance is always a fiercely fought topic wherever it appears in the agenda. COP25 is no different and we may see fireworks later in week 2 when the stakes are raised. 

Lost and Damaged

Rich countries have utterly failed to limit their pollution despite knowing for decades the negative effects it causes. They have also failed to support poor countries in developing cleanly instead of with fossil fuels.

As a result, we live in a world that is already 1C warmer than a couple of hundred years ago. That might not seem like a lot, but all the climate change disasters we are witnessing show that even 1 degree warming represents unsafe territory for many millions of people. 

Hurricane Maria Damages Dominica's Main Hospital, Leaves ...
Dominica in the wake of Hurricane Maria

Because rich countries have also failed to help countries and people on the frontline of climate change to adapt, we must now face up to the economic, social and cultural impacts from climate change to which we can’t adapt. This is what policy-makers and experts refer to as “loss and damage”. Small island nations first raised the alarm back in 1992, but were fobbed off with insurance schemes. Nowadays, though, insurance providers won’t cover for many of the effects of climate change as they have become too common.

Warsaw International Mechanism

At COP19 in Warsaw, poor countries won their fight to create an international mechanism for loss and damage. At the time Filipino negotiator Yeb Saño was on hunger strike as Supertyphoon Haiyan battered his country, killing over 5000 people

COP19: NGO delegates walk out of Warsaw climate talks in ...
Yeb Saño supported by climate justice groups

This year Parties are due to review the loss and damage mechanism, so COP25 has become the moment to make it fit for purpose. Since being set up, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) has made decent progress in terms of knowledge generation and coordination on loss and damage, particularly on climate-induced displacement. 

However, it has made zero progress on the critical and issue of facilitating financial support to poor countries so that they can avert, minimise, and address loss and damage. 

Fear of finance

Rich countries are very reluctant to even talk about this topic. The United States made sure to insert a “liability clause” at COP21 to absolve themselves from any responsibility for climate damages. Even though they are the biggest polluters of all time

Frontline communities around the world need resources to be able to cope with a rapidly warming world. In the negotiations, developing countries want to set up a comprehensive finance facility. This facility would funnel large sums of mostly public funds towards dealing with loss and damage. They also hope to set up an expert group on action and support for loss and damage, and to conduct a needs assessment for loss and damage in developing countries.

Poor countries like Dominica, Mozambique, and the Philippines are already facing huge amounts of loss and damage. In the case of Dominica, the country suffered damages worth 224% of its GDP in one hurricane. Therefore, they argue, the finance must be up to scratch. 

Rich countries could contribute directly from their national budgets. Supplementary funds can come from new and innovative sources such as air and maritime levies, a Climate Damages Tax on oil, gas and coal extraction, and a “Robin Hood” Financial Transaction Tax. Together these sources can generate badly needed additional funds. 

Though it is hard to estimate the total costs, a coalition of civil society groups have called for at least USD $50 billion per year by 2022, rising to USD$150 billion by 2025 and USD$300 billion by 2030. The coalition have calculated that the fair share of the US alone is 30-40% of the global effort to address loss and damage. 

COP25 should recommend other measures such as immediate relief on all debt due to be paid by developing countries who face the current climate emergency. This could take the form of an interest-free moratorium on debt payments, which would open up resources currently earmarked for debt repayments to immediate emergency relief and reconstruction.

A question of governance

The Warsaw International Mechanism was set up under the COP, but loss and damage is also an issue in the 2015 Paris Agreement (Article 8) which has its own governing body known as the CMA. (Shorthand for the absurd “Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement”). 

The “scope” of Article 8 of the Paris Agreement is narrower than how loss and damage has been defined under the COP. Because of this, developed countries are keen for the review to conclude that the Warsaw Mechanism should be governed exclusively by the CMA. Developing countries insist that the COP and CMA jointly govern the WIM. What seems like a technical quibble is actually a highly political battle.

Many observers have touted COP25 as the loss and damage COP. But with the Chilean Presidency and many developed countries’ attention focused more on the market mechanisms of Article 6, and with rich countries refusal to accept their responsibility, vulnerable countries will have to fight tooth and nail to make sure COP adopts decisions that take loss and damage seriously.

The Group of 77 + China (a negotiating bloc of 134 developing countries) have submitted a proposal to the COP. In it, they outline their ideas for what COP25 should decide regarding loss and damage. With the moral high ground, they should be successful. But the vested interests against them are strong. Keep checking our coverage to see how to debate unfolds.

Dangerous Distractions

Since the early years of the UN climate talks, governments responsible for needing to make the deepest emissions cuts have repeatedly attempted to divert this responsibility. They have done so in several faulty and flawed ways: by creating and advocating for “market mechanisms” to trade units of carbon, by incorporating carbon capture technologies into emissions reductions plans, and by advocating for “techno-fixes” including dangerous and untested geoengineering technologies. 

The underlying feature of all of these is the principle of offsetting – outsourcing emissions to elsewhere or trading credits to buy permission to emit. Sort of like the indulgences of the 12th century Catholic Church

weblog: carbon offset certificate - front

Offsetting emissions through market mechanisms is the antithesis to a true climate response from the global community, and from industrialized countries in particular. The science is clear: keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius will require strong emissions cuts, beginning in the developed world, which needs to achieve actual zero emissions as soon as possible. Mechanisms that rely on offsetting delay meaningful action and don’t address the fundamental gap between the 1.5 degree target and countries’ weak progress in emissions reductions. 

Furthermore, these mechanisms are rife with loopholes and often allow polluters to increase their emissions and profit from participating in such schemes, all while claiming the false banner of climate leadership. More recently, so called ‘Nature Based Solutions’ have formed the battleground in the fight to extend the concept of commodification of carbon to all ecosystems, with soil carbon, biodiversity and other values being measured and commodified.

No REDD+ protest, Paris | Friends of the Earth ...

What is a carbon market?

A carbon market is a scheme that views atmospheric space in “units”. These units are essentially the right to pollute for a price. The assumption of a carbon market is that if polluters are made to pay per unit of emissions, they will be incentivised to invest in alternatives or pollute less. Yet the opposite has proven true.

For industries and countries with more wealth, carbon markets simply allow them to continue with business as usual while outsourcing their emissions elsewhere. The established market mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (below) are riddled with loopholes and have actually resulted in an increase in emissions.

Repeating the same mistakes

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol established the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a highly controversial, contested scheme which eventually proved to be ineffective in meeting the targets of the Kyoto Protocol.

The intention of the CDM was to help developed countries meet their emissions reductions targets under the Protocol through the purchase of emissions reductions credits, but the actual result was that some businesses made a lot of money selling “credits” to entities who wanted to pollute more but not have said pollution on their books. The CDM was also widely criticised for harming local people and violating human rights, especially the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as failing to actually cut emissions.

For years afterwards, international negotiations on markets usually ended in no agreement between countries, although of course some countries did set up their own domestic markets which they hoped would one day allow for international trading. 

Countries that are strongly in favour of market approaches include the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and the US, while countries including Venezuela and Bolivia have strongly resisted such offsetting mechanisms. It is not clear how the recent turmoil will affect Bolivia or whether its “transitional” government will do a u-turn or simply remain silent.

After a frenzied two weeks of negotiations in 2015, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement ended up allowing countries to “choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions and to promote sustainable development and environmental integrity,” and to engage “on a voluntary basis in cooperative approaches that involve the use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs)” which can count towards their NDCs so long as they promote sustainable development, avoid double counting and ensure environmental integrity. 

'A Child Leads': Staff Refuses to Report on Climate Summit ...

Thus the door was opened to conflate carbon trading and offsetting with “cooperative approaches” to tackling climate change. The reference to “ITMOs” has also opened the door for the establishment of an international carbon market – contentious given the years of debate on this matter never arriving at an agreement, and laden with pitfalls and risks.

The ITMOs also pose the difficult question of whether a country can use such international transfers for anything other than fulfilling its Paris pledge. Can they, for example, be used in the global offsetting scheme under the International Civil Aviation Organisation, known as ‘Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation’ (CORSIA), which is not under the UNFCCC and which could potentially rely on 2.6 billion tonnes of ‘credits’ from supposedly avoided deforestation. 

Similarly, can carbon credits from other schemes outside the Paris Agreement also be traded alongside credits generated in the PA? Such schemes include the reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation or REDD+ scheme, also highly criticised for leading to increased emissions and harm to forest communities and indigenous peoples.

Climate: Real problem, false solutions. No.3: REDD+ - Via ...

Rather than focus on more meaningful, equitable methods of cooperation like technology sharing, capacity building, and finance, Article 6 decided that a “Sustainable Development Mechanism” should be set up. Like the CDM before it, this new market mechanism, if it is established, is likely to fail in delivering emissions reductions targets outlined in countries’ National Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

COP25 and the fate of Article 6

Last year at COP24 in Katowice, the section of the “Paris rulebook” dealing with Article 6 was not agreed and became a major sticking point. The talks nearly collapsed in spectacular fashion as Brazil wanted the certified emission reduction credits (CERs) it had obtained under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism to be counted towards its pledge under the Paris Agreement, and refused to accept rules to prevent double-counting. Eventually the formal conclusion was that no agreement could be reached. The same thing happened at the next round of talks in Bonn this June. 

The scene is therefore set for a pressurised round of talks in Madrid, as COP25 is the deadline to conclude this last remaining section of the Paris rulebook. Agreement will be difficult as double counting remains an unresolved issue and wealthy countries such as Australia continue to insist on double-counting their Kyoto credits towards their Paris commitments.

Carbon Market Watch estimates that there are some 20 billion units under the Kyoto mechanisms that could potentially be transferred into the Paris mechanism, rendering the Agreement’s 1.5 degree C goal impossible to achieve. But it gets worse.

[s]ome countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement have low targets which will be easy to over achieve. This means that these countries could potentially create between 18.7 and 28.3 GtCO2e worth of credits – or ‘hot air ’- that they can sell without reducing a single tonne of greenhouse gas emissions.

False Solutions to climate change | Climate Justice Taranaki

Market fundamentalists will want to leave Madrid with detailed technical guidelines to allow them to forge ahead with international carbon markets. Many others, notably those who do not stand to profit financially from these market mechanisms, will want only general guidance to try and ensure that if, or when, international markets are established they are regulated and do not threaten human rights or environmental integrity as they have under Kyoto.

Guidance, such as that offered by Carbon Market Watch below, can be quite simple:

  1. Only emission reductions that take place after 2020 can be used towards the NDCs
  2. Countries that over achieve their targets because they were set below business-as-usual emission levels in the
    first place should not be allowed to transfer these hot air credits to other countries that have adopted more
    stringent targets
  3. Countries with hot air in their current NDCs should not be allowed to transfer it to subsequent NDC periods to
    meet future targets
  4. Emissions should not be compensated through the use of excessively old credits, representing emissions
    which took place a decade or more earlier

With everything else in the Paris rulebook “package” having been wrapped up, it’s hard to see what exactly the horse trading will be but we can be sure of some.

Real solutions

The only way to reach real zero emissions as quickly as possible is to reject these dangerous distractions outright, and simultaneously for developed countries to embrace meaningful, real solutions to achieve the deep emissions cuts they are responsible for, while unconditionally financing the same in developing countries. There is an abundance of real, feasible, cost effective action across all sectors that can be implemented here and now, many of which will have immediate effect. 

Protest against proposed programs like REDD+ | Flickr ...

These include things like but not limited to investing in infrastructure of electrified, mass public transit, with free or heavily subsidized fares; rapidly transforming industrial agriculture towards agroecological practices through proper incentives and policies combined with removal of perverse subsidies, and phase out artificial fertilizers; embracing community governed forest conservation; planning for and transforming energy systems away from centralized corporate-controlled fossil fuels and other harmful technologies to clean, safe systems that empower people and communities. 

Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement provides an opportunity to address the real drivers of emissions by advancing policies and practices via voluntary cooperation among countries that can help deliver deep emissions cuts while advancing equity, environmental protection, and wellbeing. A work programme on how to enhance linkages and create synergy between inter alia, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer and capacity-building and how to facilitate the implementation and coordination of non-market approaches is under discussion at COP25.

Further reading

Click here to learn more about what carbon markets are and how they work

Click here to learn more about how carbon markets are a threat to people and planet

Click here to learn more about what real international solutions to the crisis look like

Click here to learn more about the nitty gritty of Article 6 negotiations

Another lost decade

Extinction Rebellion, the climate protesters disrupting ...

Even a cursory glance at the latest climate science makes it abundantly clear that the commitments to the Paris Agreement (“Nationally Determined Contributions” or NDCs for short) are simply not good enough. But rich countries are wriggling around to escape from any attempt to revise those plans in light of science and equity before they take effect in January 2021. 

There is a pattern here: in 2012, countries agreed the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol. This decision contained binding targets for rich countries to cut pollution from 2013 – 2020. Seven years later and the Amendment has still not been ratified. For comparison, the Paris Agreement was ratified in under a year. 

Several rich countries (Canada, Russia, and Japan) actually said they would no longer participate in agreements to reduce aggregate emissions by 18% below 1990 levels and revise this target in 2014. 

Bizarre Taiwan News Animation Mocks Canada's Pullout of ...

The so-called “pre-2020 action” has been shown by civil society to be wholly inadequate and unjust as it transfers the burden of tackling climate change from rich to poor. What should be a case of “why put off to tomorrow what you can do today” has become a case of kicking the can further and further down the road. A review of this pre-2020 action, or lack thereof, is scheduled to take place in two stages in Madrid. The first stage on December 4th will be technical followed by a high-level segment on December 10th.  

However, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and the US are unwilling to let the review be more than just a talk shop, as was the case with previous reviews. This is hardly surprising given that ten years of UNEP Emissions Gap reports have basically stated that these countries have spent the last decade doing the exact opposite of what they should have done. 

“Emissions Gap Report 2019”
Graphic from the 2019 Emission Gap Report

Not only have we lost a decade to inaction, according to a new report our governments’ current plans for the coming decade involves the production of a whopping 120% more fossil fuels than we have the ability to produce without blowing past 1.5C warming. 

some men just want to watch the world burn on Tumblr
Let that sink in. 

As we hurtle towards, perhaps beyond, planetary tipping points, there are people in positions of power making a conscious decision to risk the basis for human civilisation — all in the pursuit of profit. 

Of course, we cannot now get back the time we’ve lost. But the next critical decade does not have to be the same as the past. The future is not yet written. We know that global emissions must decrease by 7.6% annually starting now if we are to have any chance of averting a 1.5C warmer world. This would still be a world of incredible climate violence such as we have witnessed this year with forest fires ravaging California and Australia, flooding inundating Venice, and cyclones battering Mozambique, the Bahamas, and China. 

So we need a plan for rapid decarbonisation in every country. But as author Naomi Klein and scientist Sivan Kartha explained in a recent article in the Boston Globe

at a time of tremendous economic inequality and injustice, only a plan firmly rooted in both fairness and boldness has a hope of building the support necessary to take on the big polluters and win transformative climate action.

This is plainly obvious and evidenced in recent protests in Ecuador as well as the Gilet Jaunes protests across France – both sparked by a regressive fuel tax. But the same idea of fairness must also apply at the global level, for the same reasons. As the IPCC put it in their landmark report on 1.5C warming:

Public acceptability can enable or inhibit the implementation of policies and measures to limit global warming and adapt to the consequences. Public acceptability depends on the individual’s evaluation of expected policy consequences, the perceived fairness of the distribution of these consequences and perceived fairness of decision procedures.”

No country can stop climate change on its own. If one, even a large polluter like the US, managed to enact a just transition to zero carbon overnight, it would still experience climate change alongside the rest of the world unless all other countries vastly reduced their emissions too. The irrefutable need for an international approach is the basis for these negotiations. And that requires trust – something which has been severely undermined by decades of broken promises like we have seen with the failure to ratify the Doha Amendment and the failure to deliver the $100 billion per year of desperately needed climate finance.

COP25 is a story of escape

Following massive anti-austerity and anti-government protests across Chile, the 25th United Nations’ annual climate change summit – Conference of the Parties, or COP for short – was relocated from Santiago to Madrid. By offering to host the summit instead, Spain gave the Chilean government a chance to escape the international spotlight that would have further exposed its violent crackdown of protests which were escalating in the run up to COP25. It is estimated that the state violence in Santiago is now the worst the country has seen since the Pinochet dictatorship, but the news cycle has moved on. 

The change of location created logistical havoc and will severely limit participation in the debate. Tens of thousands of delegates had planned to travel to Santiago not only for the UN meetings but for large social fora such as the Cumbre de los Pueblos, or People’s Summit. Those hit hardest by the location change will as usual be groups that are primarily indigenous, grassroots movements, and from the Global South. 

Chile is still presiding over the meeting in Madrid, but how domestic unrest and the sudden relocation will affect its leadership and legitimacy at COP remains to be seen – as does the exact nature of Spain’s role (Spain held its second general election of 2019 on November 10th and at the time of writing has yet to form a government).

Alongside this political turmoil, the chaos of climate change is intensifying at a terrifying rate. The world’s chance to avert catastrophic runaway climate change is quickly escaping. In November the World Meteorological Organization announced that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have risen to a record high. The United Nations Environment Program’s 2019 “Emissions Gap Report” unequivocally stated that, in order to remain within the 1.5C warming threshold, global emissions must be reduced by 7.6% annually from now until 2030. This represents a five-fold increase in ambition compared to current plans as laid out in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). 

COP25 is the penultimate meeting before the Paris Agreement NDCs comes into effect in January 2021 and countries are expected to start implementing their commitments. However, in spite of growing numbers of people taking to the streets to demand action, the meeting threatens to be the latest installment in a years-long Great Escape of responsibility that rich countries have been enacting. 

To escape from their responsibilities, rich industrialised countries are using dangerous distractions like carbon markets which undermine real solutions. They are deliberately forgetting their previous promises, delaying others from taking action by withholding vital funding, and shutting down any attempts to talk about compensation for climate damages. 

We will explore each of these escape routes for polluters in the coming days as COP25 gets underway. 

Notes

Before diving into the specific issues at COP25 it’s worth checking out the following links which contain important background to understanding the evolving dynamics of the climate change negotiations and the climate justice movements’ demands.