How will we measure success in Paris?

Posted on December 7, 2015 by rstevens

After observing the first week of COP21, it is clear that reaching agreement is not the measure of success in Paris. Everyone from the Executive Secretary to heads of delegation have expressed confidence that all Parties can agree on a final outcome. In fact, at the closing of the ADP plenary, ADP Co-Chair Ahmed Djoghlaf suggested that we have already made history in that the “final general debate” had concluded at Thursday’s ADP Contact Group meeting and all 196 Parties agreed on the draft Paris Outcome on Saturday.

Now that a Paris Outcome seems inevitable, what is the next measure of success? In describing a successful agreement throughout the first week, Parties have rattled off buzzwords such as “comprehensive,” “ambitious,” “fair,” “legally binding,” “enduring,” “long-term,” and “strong.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon addressed this question with more specificity during Monday’s Leaders Event where he listed four criteria for success. First, he stated, the agreement must be durable by providing “a long-term vision that anchors the below-2-degrees-Celsius goal, and recognizes the imperative to strengthen resilience.” Second, he continued, the agreement must be dynamic in order to “accommodate changes in the global economy, and not have to be continually renegotiated.” The third requirement for success is an agreement that embodies solidarity with the poor and most vulnerable by ensuring “sufficient and balanced adaptation and mitigation support for developing countries.” Fourth, he concluded, the agreement must be credible by ratcheting up ambition every five years, beginning before 2020.

To me, Paris has already been successful. COP21 has raised public awareness about climate change by bringing together an unprecedented number of world leaders, country delegates, CEOs, governors, mayors, civil society members, and investors to “demonstrate that they understand both the risks associated with inaction and the opportunities from being part of the solution.” As President Obama said in his speech on Monday, we are “marshaling our best efforts to save the world.”

Sparks Fly as G77 and China Clash With Developed Countries Over Climate Finance

Posted on December 3, 2015 by rstevens

Thursday’s ADP Contact Group stocktaking meeting took an unexpected turn when Ambassador Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko of South Africa took the floor with sharp words for developed countries that she accused of obstructing today’s Spin Off Group on Adaptation. Importantly, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko spoke in her capacity as Chair of the G77 negotiating group, which represents 137 developing countries plus China and includes the majority of the world’s poor. Bolivia also spoke on behalf of this group, accusing the developed countries of negotiating in “bad faith.”

At the stocktaking, the G77 and China expressed two chief concerns about negotiations to date. First, it noted that developed countries continuously fail to give attention to “Loss and Damage” associated with climate change, an issue critical to the LDC and SIDS groups who are most vulnerable to climate change impacts. The second source of contention related to whether and at what levels rich countries were willing to provide climate financing to poor countries to enable them to cut emissions and cope with the effects of global warming.

As of now, the developed countries, particularly the U.S., do not want mention of Loss and Damage in the final agreement. As for climate financing, one article of the draft agreement would require countries to make plans for adapting to climate change, and states that: “Developing country parties are eligible for support in the implementation of this article.” However, it is unclear whether rich nations will provide fixed levels of financial assistance.

After presenting these grievances to the ADP Co-Chairs Thursday, the G77 and China suspended the meeting to “huddle” for just over 20 minutes. Fortunately, instead of threatening to withdraw from further negotiations, the G77 and China returned and proposed a procedural path forward, in which the ADP Co-Chairs would produce a clean draft agreement text to the Parties for review Friday to allow for a comprehensive view of all of the issues.

While these meetings will pick up Friday morning, time is of the essence. Parties must work to finalize the latest draft of the agreement and decision by Saturday midday. This deadline comes from COP President Laurent Fabius who charged the ADP with cleaning up the draft agreement and decision text by reducing the number of options.

Fun fact: our delegation left the venue Thursday night with Ambassador Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko as meeting attendees traveled home on the COP21 shuttle.

“What would we tell our grandchildren if we fail?”

Posted on December 2, 2015 by rstevens

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech during the opening session of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech during the opening session of COP21 at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

Today’s children and their future heirs have been getting a lot of airtime at COP21 as Parties and world leaders regularly invoke “our children, grandchildren, and future generations” in a call for immediate action on climate change. At the Leaders Event Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Prince of Wales, French President Francois Hollande, and the prime minister of Tuvalu were among those who invoked future generations – even mentioning their own children and grandchildren – to stress the importance of a long-term deal. This personal appeal to “think of your children” is unsurprising as climate policy fundamentally asks the present to sacrifice for the future.

A 2013 Time magazine article discusses the question of intergenerational equity and cites a study about “the retirement saving crisis” to suggest that human beings are not good at planning for the future even when their own future selves stand to benefit. Time suggests that this inability to sacrifice for the future is compounded in the climate change context because the most severe impacts from climate change are many years away or else they are happening in developing countries that are out of sight.

So, is there hope for a climate deal in Paris when human beings only think of themselves?

Some reassurance comes from the text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or “Convention”) itself. The first stated principle of the Convention under Article 3 reads, “[t]he Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” While Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, observed at the CVF meeting this week that this article includes the only mention of people in the Convention, the principle makes clear that Parties should consider future generations when making decisions.

This principle is the subject of tomorrow’s Young and Future Generations Day at COP21, a non-stop celebration of youth power and participation in the climate talks. This celebration “recognizes the key role that young people play in reaching innovative and ambitious solutions to climate change,” and will generate several related side events on tomorrow’s calendar.

Beyond Paris and the Convention, three weeks ago, Our Children’s Trust hit a major milestone when, for the first time, a judge ruled in favor of intergenerational climate justice. The judge ordered the State of Washington to reconsider 8 youth plaintiffs’ petition requesting that the Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come. The judge’s eloquent opinion summarizes the importance of intergenerational equity stating, “[the youths’] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late.”

Is Climate Change a Threat to National Security?

Posted on December 2, 2015 by rstevens

COP21 began Monday with a moment of silence for victims of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, and the tragedy served as a touchstone for world leaders urging unity and action. Nearly every speaker at the daylong Leaders Event expressed condolences for the Paris attacks, and some, including the Prince of Wales who opened the event, highlighted the connection between climate change and national security.

In his speech, President Obama declared “what greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it.” Later, in a press briefing room at COP21, President Obama doubled down on this sentiment stating that “in some ways, [climate change] is akin to the problem of terrorism and ISIL.” Both threats, President Obama said, require a long, sustained effort by the United States to assess and neutralize them.

French Foreign Minister and COP21 President Laurent Fabius has called climate change “a threat to peace,” describing a world where floods, desertification, and droughts will intensify conflicts over
ever-scarcer resources and spark a massive wave of environmental refugees. “Terrorism is significant, but naked hunger is as significant as terrorism,” he said. “And the relationship between terrorist activities and naked hunger are obvious. If you look at the vectors of recruitment into terrorist cells, most of the most vulnerable are hunger-prone areas.”

Also vocal on this issue is presidential hopeful Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who stated publicly during the First Democratic Presidential Debate that climate change is the single greatest threat to the U.S.’s national security. Understandably, debate moderators revisited this question just one day after the Paris attacks during the second debate on November 14, asking Senator Sanders if he stood by his previous statement in light of the growing security threat from ISIS. “Absolutely,” said Sanders. “In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” Like Fabius, he explained that climate change impacts will increase international conflicts as people struggle over limited amounts of water and land to grow their crops.

Criticizing this correlation to terrorism, an Op-Ed published in the New York Times soon after the Paris attacks called out climate change advocates, among others, and asked incredulously, “must we instantly bootstrap obliquely related agendas and utterly unconnected grievances to the carnage in Paris, responding to it with an unsavory opportunism instead of a respectful grief?”

However, recent reports suggest that this correlation is warranted. In July, a report by the U.S. Defense Department called climate change an “urgent and growing threat” to national security, and this October NATO’s parliament demanded stronger action by member states to tackle a warming planet. The repeated discussion of the nexus between climate change and national security Monday makes clear that this is no longer a political question – it’s a fact.

Individually Survivors, Together a Force – World’s Vulnerable Take Action at COP21

Posted on November 30, 2015 by rstevens

Today, at the Third High-Level Meeting of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), government leaders representing over 40 countries that are the most vulnerable to impacts from climate change adopted a historic joint declaration, the Manila-Paris Declaration. The Declaration, and its associated three-year Road Map, calls for a more ambitious long-term temperature goal of 1.5˚C, zero emissions by mid-century, and 100% renewable energy decarbonization by 2050.

At the meeting, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, acknowledged this important action but raised concerns that CVF was not making a coordinated effort to push for an ambitious Paris agreement. Outgoing chair of the CVF, Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, also called for collective action stating, “individually, we are already survivors; collectively, we are a force towards a fairer, more climate-proactive world.”

Will the Dark Cloud Over EPA’s Clean Power Plan Rain on Paris?

Posted on November 11, 2015 by rstevens

Last month, EPA published the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the most ambitious and controversial rulemaking in the history of the Clean Air Act, and set off a flurry of litigation as many Republican lawmakers urged states to challenge the rule.

The Clean Power Plan is EPA’s first attempt to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States. The goal of the CPP is to achieve a 30% reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 with an interim goal of an average 17% reduction in the 2020-2029 period. To achieve this goal, the CPP sets emissions rate targets for states and requires each state, by 2018, to develop a plan for how to reach its assigned target by 2030.

Only days after the CPP was published, 26 states as well as business groups and coal companies filed suit in D.C. District Court challenging EPA’s legal basis for promulgating the rule. Last week, more than two dozen states, cities, and environmental groups intervened in the litigation to support EPA . The legal issue turns on whether the Court will defer to EPA’s interpretation of its authority to regulate power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). Unfortunately, during the 1990 amendments to the CAA, Congress passed both the House and Senate versions of this statutory section. In effect, the Senate version allows for regulation of power plants under Section 111(d), while the House version does not. Opponents to the CPP have asked for a stay to immediately halt the rule from taking effect while the case is ongoing. The Court will not rule on the stay until after the climate change negotiations have concluded.

Adding to the assault, Republican leaders recently attempted to pass resolutions invoking the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to disapprove of “major” rules issued by federal agencies before the rules take effect. Congressional opponents could also attempt to delay or defund the CPP by adding riders to bills or, worse yet, seeking an outright amendment to the Clean Air Act.

Looking ahead to Paris, the controversy surrounding the CPP casts doubt on the feasibility of the U.S.’s mitigation pledge. In its INDC, the U.S. pledged an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26-28% below its 2005 level in 2025. While the CPP is not the only step the U.S. is taking under its INDC to meets its mitigation pledge – investments to deploy clean energy technologies, standards to double the fuel economy of cars and light trucks, and steps to reduce methane pollution are also cited – implementation of the CPP is critical to achieve this mitigation target.

The importance of the Clean Power Plan for the U.S.’s role at COP 21 cannot be overstated – it is the “centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s climate policy agenda.” Not only that, announcement of the CPP continued momentum toward Paris that began a year ago with the U.S.-China bilateral agreement to reduce emissions, followed by the U.S.’s submission of its INDC in March, and the publication of the President’s Climate Action Plan this summer. Hopefully, the President’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday will give the U.S. negotiators “more wind at their back” at the upcoming climate talks.

“We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,” President Obama announcing EPA’s Clean Power Plan in August 2015.

ADP Co-Chairs Briskly Move Forward to Paris @UNFCCC #ADP2 #ConspiracyTheory

Posted on October 22, 2015 by rstevens

If the U.N. climate negotiations are like middle school, then Twitter is where the hallway gossip happens.

As the first day of the ADP 2-11 session wrapped up Monday, whispers of an alleged “U.S. conspiracy to sink Paris” began trending on Twitter. The buzz made its way to the CAN International press briefing room when a ClimateWire reporter asked the panel to comment on a rumor that ADP Co-Chair Daniel Reifsnyder of the United States is sabotaging the upcoming COP 21 negotiations by butchering the draft Paris Agreement.

Liz Gallagher, leader of the climate diplomacy program at E3G, deftly fielded the question by defending the Co-Chairs’ work and pointing out that everyone is having a “love/hate” relationship with the draft—“it’s not just a North-South thing.” While her answer may not have quashed talk of a U.S. conspiracy to upset Paris, the exchange raises interesting questions about how parties are reacting to the Co-Chairs’ “non-paper” and the recent influx of INDCs.

As we’ve seen, many parties are not taking the sizable cuts to the 90-page Geneva Negotiating Text well. Developing countries argue that the slimmer, 9-page draft ignores adaptation and finance, while developed countries find the draft’s mitigation goals too vague. Dr. Saleemul Huq of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development told the same press briefing room Monday that the draft was “all hat and no trousers.” Some believe the Co-Chairs’ aggressive edits to the draft text were “a deliberate attempt to temporarily ‘take some heat’ while ultimately putting pressure on the Group of 77.”

The “U.S. text” conspiracy theory was sparked in part by an article published by Business Standard, India’s leading business daily, entitled “Developed world’s climate change targets less than fair.” The article references a report finding that the U.S. has committed to only a fifth of its “fair share” in its INDC while “almost all developing countries, including India and China, have taken on more than their fair share of the burden” through their INDCs.

While not suggesting that the U.S. is intentionally monkey wrenching Bonn, yesterday’s buzz-worthy report, “Fair Shares: A Civil Society Equity Review of INDCs,” supports India’s position that developed countries like the United States should do more to close the emission ambition gap. The report finds that Japan, Russia, the EU, and the United States have the starkest gaps between their climate ambitions and their fair shares.

As evidenced by press room activity this week, ADP 2-11 news is moving quickly from hallways to headlines as parties’ reactions and positions are captured by the nearest smart phone user, posted to social media, and filtered through media outlets within hours. While this process keeps negotiations transparent and informs the public – without carefully tracking the draft text, the Fair Shares report, INDCs, and other party communications – it’s easy to lose sight of what’s actually happening on the ground in Bonn.