As with any massive undertaking, practice makes better. The Global Stocktake in 2023 is no different.
In accordance with decisions at COP21, to implement enhanced action prior to 2020, and at COP23, emphasizing that enhanced pre-2020 ambition can lay a solid foundation for post-2020 goals, this year’s COP held a two-part assessment of global progress. The first event, held on December 5th, was a Technical Review, while the second event, held on December 10th, was a High-Level meeting of the Parties. Each session was composed of two panels. Each answered predetermined questions followed by an open plenary discussion where Member Parties could intervene.
The Technical Review’s first panel, consisting of the heads of the subsidiary bodies, considered “the work of the UNFCCC process related to the mitigation efforts up to 2020.” It addressed issues such as technology transfer, capacity building, and the IPCC 15 report. The second panel, made up of financial bodies and technical experts, highlighted “efforts of the UNFCCC process to enhance climate implementation and ambition up to 2020.” It focused on ease of access to climate finance, as well as on parties’ progress towards their finance commitments.
Today’s High-Level meeting saw two panels made up of ministers of various Developed and Developing Country Parties: Poland, Grenada, the European Commission, China, & Australia in the first session, followed by Norway, Brazil, Germany, Ethiopia, Japan, & Finland. The panels began by discussing the pre-2020 efforts of Parties to mitigate greenhouse gases & ways to enhance efforts, and the provision of support for climate efforts and enhancing efforts, respectively.
Discussions in each session forced Parties to consider their efforts to implement mitigation strategies, make climate finance more accessible, and to meet the various commitments and ambitions in the pre-2020 period. While the aim of this stocktake was to “provide a space for holistic reflection by ministers and other high-level representatives,” it raised serious questions regarding gaps between Parties’ commitments and the reality exposed by the IPCC 15 and other reports.
While Panelists focused on the positive and what had been working thus far, such as finding the right incentives to delink economic growth from emissions, doubts were raised during the plenary. Most poignant was India’s intervention: “Are these pre-2020 actions adequate? Have we addressed the task before us?”
To which, it seems, the answer is “No. Not yet.”
Category Archives: COP21
Adaptation in NDCs: To Include or Not To Include, That is the Question.
You could definitely feel the awkwardness in the conference room during the APA 1-7 agenda item #3 negotiations.This agenda item addresses the mitigation section of the 1/CP.21 decision (where we got the Paris Agreement). What caused such tension? Well, the parties have different positions on what to do with adaptation in NDCs, but were hesitant to speak about it during the session. The draft text for this negotiation issue briefly mentions suggested language for mandatory adaptation commitments within NDCs. But the history of international climate change negotiations hasn’t given much guidance on the issue.
The UNFCCC first mentioned adaptation, but only to build climate change resilience in least developed countries. The Kyoto Protocol essentially ignored adaptation, and favored very stringent mitigation commitments for Annex I countries (a designation, assigned for the UNFCCC, for a party who could provide financial support to other countries). After over a decade of focusing solely on mitigation, the parties at COP21 decided to develop a new agreement with balanced representation of both adaptation and mitigation. As you can imagine, old habits are hard to break. And that was quite apparent in today’s session.
The developed countries tried their best to eliminate adaptation discussions from today’s informal consultations. The general statement in their interventions basically said that talks about adaptation were inappropriate at this session because it was being discussed elsewhere. If a party did decide to speak more on adaptation, the next typical response would reference the history of mitigation priority in previous COP decisions. The history of previous commitments shows an obvious pattern for making mitigation the priority for achieving UNFCCC climate goals. And although COP21 wanted to balance adaptation and mitigation, subsequent decisions did not reflect that goal. Instead, past guidance on NDCs has emphasized mitigation more than adaptation. Furthermore, the language of Article 4 (National Commitments) of the Paris Agreement (the treaty that created the concept of NDCs) outlines the general commitments of the parties without leaving any room for anything adaptation related.
Alternatively, the developing countries–primarily the African countries–(briefly) noted in their inventions the importance of including adaptation into NDCs. Though this issue has its own agenda item, some developing countries expressed their concerns about discussing adaptation at this session. Looking at the language of the Paris Agreement, Article 3 (NDCs) is ambiguous enough to include adaptation into the NDCs. Also, Article 7 (Adaptation) paragraph 11 lists NDCs as a document that may include adaptation communications. The purpose of the Paris Agreement itself is to increase adaptation consideration into climate change action. With such an open door, why not require adaptation commitments within the NDCs?
Negotiations are successful when parties talk through their differences to reach an acceptable compromise. Though today was just an informal consultation, it foreshadowed a rather frustrating next few days. With the constant dismissal of adaptation in this negotiation, it’ll be interesting to see how the advocates for adaptation will respond to the lack of dialogue at the table. Parties won’t be able to ignore the oversized elephant in the room for much longer.
From Talanoa to the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue
The Paris Agreement requires Parties to submit new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by 2020 and participate in a regular review of whether their individual actions contribute to the collective achievement of the Agreement’s aim of keeping the global rise in temperature to “well under” 2C degrees. Article 14 of the Agreement outlines this “global stocktake” procedure, but the first one does not take place until 2023. Given how quickly the Agreement entered into force just 11 months after its adoption in December, 2015, and that most Parties rely on NDCs formulated in 2014, waiting till the first global stocktake would result in an almost ten-year gap between when these mitigation and adaptation pledges were made and when they were assessed collectively for sufficiency. Fortunately, COP21 anticipated the need for a “first draft” stocktake and created the Facilitative Dialogue. At COP23, the Fijian presidency seeks to design this Dialogue that will take place in 2018.
At COP21, Parties agreed to have a Facilitative Dialogue that will “take stock of the collective efforts in relation to the progress approaching the long-term temperature goal determined in Article 4.1. of the Agreement.” Furthermore, the Parties agreed that this stocktaking would “inform the preparation of the nationally determined contributions in accordance with the Article 4, paragraph 8, of the Agreement.”
Since the COP21 decision did not specify the design of the facilitative dialogue, COP23 is expected to determine what inputs should feed the stocktake, what its modalities should be, and what outputs the dialogue should produce. The Incoming President of COP23 underscored in a May 2017 speech how important this outcome is to Fiji: “To uphold and advance the Paris Agreement, ensure progress on the implementation guidelines and undertake consultations together with the Moroccan COP22 Presidency to design the process for the Facilitative Dialogue in 2018.”
The design proposal recently presented by Fiji and Morocco outlines core principles, three central questions, information to answer them, and a phased process. The Dialogue should be “constructive, facilitative and solutions oriented,” and not single out individual Parties. It should answer these questions: (1) where are we, (2) where do we want to go, and (3) how do we get there. To do this, it should use inputs from Parties and observers, like written material in blogs and reports, videos, or other formats, and gather it all on an online platform. The latest scientific information from the IPCC and UNFCCC reports on National Communications and Biennial Reports could also be inputs. Finally, the Dialogue should proceed in two phases, with a “preparatory” period starting at the May 2018 intersessional meeting and ending at the beginning of COP 24, and the “political phase” taking place at COP24. The first phase is intended to lay the groundwork for the second, when government ministers will focus on how to achieve more progress in the next round of NDCs.
In addition to proposing this Facilitative Dialogue design, the Fiji Government offers a traditional process called Talanoa to help the parties agree on it. At a recent informal meeting of Heads of Delegation, Talanoa was described this way:“The purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions, which are for the collective good. The process of Talanoa involves the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.”
The Talanoa process was employed in Fiji in 2000, when Fiji´s Parliament sought to build national unity and stability after having a hostage situation (described by the international media as a “civilian coup”) resulting from political differences between the government, ethnic leaders, and other parties. The first Talanoa was the most important one because, even though there was an atmosphere of fear and political tension, the participants–who were representatives from the diverse ethnic and religious communities, political parties and other government and military personnel– talked and listened to each other’s pain, resulting in an adjustment of people´s personal opinions and an integration of viewpoints. “It was shown that the parties could sit down and talk to one another without the meeting getting out of hand, as anticipated by some leaders.”
By using Talanoa to design the Facilitative Dialogue of 2018, the COP23 Presidency seeks to create an environment of “inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue.” Fiji hopes that Talanoa will allow Parties to hear one another’s concerns, especially for developed countries to listen to the needs, opinions and experiences of developing countries. If so, the process of the Facilitative Dialogue could give Parties the opportunity to build empathy by identifying climate action in areas that have not been covered by the NDCs, taking into account the differentiation between developed and developing countries. Talanoa could also help countries reiterate their collective commitment to make a wise decision for the collective good: new and more ambitious NDCs by 2020 to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
Human Mobility in the Face of Climate Change
Human mobility in the face of climate change is an issue that is closely linked to Loss and Damage (L&D). Under Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, L&D includes extreme weather events as well as slow-onset events. Both extreme weather and slow-onset events could necessitate human mobility or displacement, whether it be rising sea levels displacing coastal communities and entire islands or increasing hurricane and tsunami threats that cause communities to move inland.
In the face of these threats, the COP has taken action. At the end of COP21, decision 1/CP.21 requested that the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for L&D create a task force on displacement “to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change.” Since the COP issued this decision last December, the Executive Committee (Excom) of the WIM has published its 2016 Report to give an update on its progress over the last year, including information on the displacement task force. In the report, the Excom stated that it initiated the task force at its latest meeting and requested that the task force deliver its findings on displacement by COP24.
Keeping in line with this increasing focus on human mobility and displacement due to climate change, Thursday featured three side events on this topic. The first event discussed human mobility in the context of organizations and frameworks outside of the UNFCCC and in some instances, how those organizations and frameworks intersect with mechanisms under the UNFCCC. For example, Dina Ionesco with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) discussed a technical meeting and workshop on human mobility that occurred recently in Casablanca, Morocco, with the WIM in order to discuss capacity building, and action and implementation under the WIM. The WIM continues the call for expert advice from UN organizations and other expert bodies on the topic as part of action area six in its initial two-year workplan, further emphasizing the importance of human mobility and displacement under the WIM.
Another side event focused on the impact and importance of human mobility and displacement in especially vulnerable countries with a focus on a rights-based approach to displacement. This side event featured speakers from APMDD, COAST Trust, LDC Watch, and Friends of the Earth Africa and included discussions on what types of terminology is appropriate—migration or displacement—when discussing human mobility and climate change. Terminology in the context is important because they have set definitions in international law and these definitions don’t always conform with the context under which some human mobility occurs.
The final event from yesterday focused on cultural and heritage losses associated with human mobility and displacement. This event grounded the discussion in the noneconomic loss felt by many communities who voluntarily migrate or who are forced to leave their home behind in the face of repeated natural disasters or rising sea levels. Noneconomic losses are often overlooked when discussing human mobility because it’s difficult to assess these losses when conducting a cost-benefit analysis on whether to uproot communities. However, determining noneconomic losses, like loss of culture, are important to ensure any voluntary migrations are successful. The impacts are real and felt by all of the community members who are forced to leave their homes and sometimes livelihoods behind. Attending to and understanding these communities’ cultural wellbeing in addition to their physical wellbeing is a vital part of the conversation when discussing human mobility and displacement. With the new task force on displacement under the WIM, the above concerns should be taken into account in order to ensure the success of the program in understanding the full range of issues associated with human mobility and displacement due to climate change.
NDCs Public Registry – Pandora’s Box – Who would’ve thought?
Today, at the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) second informal meeting related to the development of modalities and procedures for the operation and use of a Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) public registry referred to in Article 4, paragraph 12, of the Paris Agreement (PA), the discussion took an interesting turn of events when the Co-Facilitators, Ms. Madeleine Diouf (Senegal) and Ms. Traude Wollansky (Austria), presented the Parties a draft on the possible elements for draft conclusions regarding this agenda item.
By conducting negotiations under this agenda item, the SBI is complying with its mandate proposed at COP21. Also, at COP21 the UNFCCC Secretariat was requested to make available an NDCs interim registry, in the first half of 2016, pending until the modalities and procedures regarding a final public registry are adopted by the CMA.
At the SBI’s first informal meeting, held on Tuesday, Parties expressed their views on the agenda item, especially emphasizing that there is a difference to be struck and understood by the Parties between the SBI and Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) agendas. The APA is currently holding informal meetings on NDCs features, information and accounting. The Parties stated that while the APA will discuss the NDCs from a more political and substantive manner, the SBI should limit its discussion and draft conclusions/decisions on the technical issues raised by the utilization of the NDCs Public Registry. Most Parties agreed on Tuesday that the NDCs Public Registry should be accessible, user-friendly, contain a record for each Party’s NDCs, including historical records and keeping track of any amendments made by the Parties to their NDCs. Also, some Parties were in favor of continuing and building upon the work that has already been done with the NDCs interim registry. The Co-Facilitators even stated at the beginning of the first informal meeting that after the first meeting is over they will start drafting conclusions and bring them at the second informal meeting for Parties consideration.
At the second informal meeting, some Parties were surprised by the Co-Facilitators action to draft and present the respective draft to the Parties. Further, some Parties considered the Co-Facilitators expectation that Parties will start discussion on the draft as highly inappropriate, especially when not all Parties have expressed their views on the agenda item. The strongest voice in this regard was China’s, that took the floor more than five times, talking on behalf of the LMDC. He vehemently called for the suspension of the informal discussion until an outcome is reached on the APA’s NDCs agenda item. Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia echoed China’s statement, considering the Co-Facilitators decision to present a draft on the possible elements as premature. Tuvalu discussed China’s point, stating that from a procedural point of view the Co-Facilitators have acted correctly and within their mandate and the Parties have to discuss the draft conclusions. Also, Tuvalu did not understand China’s point on why the SBI should wait for the APA to complete its work on the NDCs agenda item. Canada was torned on the subject, as although recognizing the Co-facilitators authority to propose the draft conclusions it also sympathized with China’s position, as the ADP discussions are very delicate.
The Parties frustration and fear with this agenda item comes from the slow motion of ongoing discussion and statements at the APA’s informal meeting on NDCs features, information and accounting. After three APA’s informal meetings, the Parties were able to reach consensus on few items such as: the principal characteristic of the NDCs is their national character and this should be included as a feature; the features are rooted in the PA; and the work under this agenda item should respect the PA.
Confusion and slow actions are reigning over the negotiation sessions of the APA and the SBI with respect to NDCs. We can only wait and see what the next days of COP22 have in store for these agenda items.
Ecological Migration and Migrating Towards Ambitious Climate Change Commitments at COP22
In 2011, the UN projected that the world will have 50 million environmental refugees by 2020. These are people who need to resettle due to climate change impacts such as drought, food shortage, disease, flooding, desertification, soil erosion, deforestation, and other environmental problems. This past week the New York Times released two stories about the plight of “ecological migrants” in the deserts of northern China. The first is a visual narrative about people living in the expanding Tengger Desert. The second article highlights the world’s largest environmental migrant resettlement project, in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
“Ecological migrants” are the millions of people whom the Chinese government had to relocate from lands distressed by climate change, industrialization, and human activity to 161 hastily built villages. China has already resettled 1.14 million residents of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where the average temperature has risen 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 years (more than half of that increase occurring from 2001 to 2010) and annual precipitation has dropped about 5.7 millimeters every decade since the 1960s.
China is only one example of a region where people have had to relocate due to climate change. Where will everyone go? This is a problem that all countries need to figure out quickly because, if the UN’s prediction is accurate, the current system of asylum, refugee resettlement, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) may prove inadequate.
The Marshall Islands need to figure out where their people will go as their island nation is quickly disappearing underwater. Predictions of dangerous tropical storms and rising salt levels in their drinking water may force citizens to flee even before the entire island is lost. In Bangladesh, about 17% of the land could be inundated by 2050, displacing an additional 18 million people.
Road leading to Isle de Jean Charles often floods, cutting off the community.Credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times.
Climate change relocations are not limited to small, developing nations. The United States has begun preparing for its own. In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants up to $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, including the first allocation of federal money to move an entire community due to the impacts of climate change: a $48 million grant for Isle de Jean Charles.
Other than the overcrowding of cities and uprooting and destruction of rural lifestyles, the global refugee crisis presents a larger concern: national security. Last year at COP21 in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tied the conflict in Syria and the resulting global refugee crisis to climate change. Secretary Kerry linked Syria’s drought and resulting urban migration—first domestic, then international—as a key factor to the civil war. This was a relevant example of how climate change can exacerbate existing political turmoil within a country.
Thus, all countries must stay committed to climate change goals, not only for maintaining millions of people’s lives and homes, but for national safety throughout the world. Whether they consider it a focus or not, many countries are currently facing the problem of creating new domestic policies on immigration. While it may be too late for some vulnerable areas to completely avoid the need to relocate its people, every climate change action helps mitigate the problem. Hopefully the issue of relocation and climate change refugees or “ecological migrants” will push countries to be more ambitious about their climate change actions at the upcoming COP22.
Getting serious about 1.5°C
As we reported earlier, the historic Paris Agreement of December 2015 established a long-term temperature goal to keep global temperature increase “well below 2°C” and to undertake efforts to limit that increase to 1.5°C, “recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
The COP21 decision adopting the Agreement included an invitation to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) “to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.”
The impacts on lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems is likely be quite different between a 2°C and a 1.5°C increase. And, while scientists have been characterizing the former for some time, too few studies have focused on a 1.5°C hotter world. So, this report will be very critical for policymakers.
The IPCC accepted the COP’s invitation in April and established an 11-member Steering Committee for the Special Report from among its top officials. A scoping meeting of more than 80 experts nominated from around the world was held in Geneva last week (August 15-18) to draft a Scoping Paper “describing the objectives and an annotated outline of the Special Report as well as the process and timeline for its preparation.” Carbon Brief, in reporting o
n the meeting, characterized part of the message from Dr. Hoesung Lee, IPCC Chair, to the gathered experts this way: “[T]he report will need to spell out what’s to be gained by limiting warming to 1.5°C, as well as the practical steps needed to get there within sustainability and poverty eradication goals.”
Outcomes of the 1.5°C Special Report scoping meeting will be presented to the IPCC’s 44th Session in October, and once the report structure is approved, “a call for authors” for each chapter will go out.
It has become clear for many, though, that limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C is pretty much impossible at this point. In fact, based on IPCC carbon budget data (originally crunched in 2015) and assuming current levels of CO2 emissions, Carbon Brief concludes that there is a 66% chance we’ll reach that 1.5°C increase in just 5 years.
This IPCC report certainly won’t come too soon!
SB44 – Next Steps After Paris
During the last two weeks of May, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gathered in Bonn, Germany for their regular midyear meeting. This session is called SB44, which simply means the 44th meeting of the climate change convention’s subbodies, which include two standing groups, the SBI (Subsidiary Body for Implementation) and SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) and one temporary one, the APA (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement). SB44 is the place where the rubber meets the road. Few world leaders attend and even fewer members of the media. Instead, career diplomats who focus on international environmental law in general and climate change specifically come to Bonn to work out the technical realities of translating treaty words into governmental actions.
At SB44, the Parties continued work on climate change mitigation and adaptation programs initiated under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol (KP). But it’s fair to say that this work was perpetually overshadowed by the future impacts of the Paris Agreement (PA). 
What would happen to pre-2020 commitments under the KP’s Second Commitment Period if the Paris Agreement entered into force early? How do the NDCs or nationally determined contributions required under the Paris Agreement relate to the pre-2020 Cancun pledges? How will existing governance mechanisms under the UNFCCC and KP, like the KP’s CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) Executive Board, UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance and Adaptation Committee, and the COP19-created Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage, serve the Paris Agreement? Will we simply learn from their track records of what (and what not) to do when creating new governance structures under the PA?
The Paris Agreement seized the center stage for at least a third of SB44’s agenda, given the number of tasks assigned by COP21for moving into implementation. While on the surface, this work has the appearance of being technical, in reality it is rooted deeply in international politics. Hence the first week of the APA’s SB44 work was held up while the Parties disputed their agenda for the midyear session. The G77+China — the largest negotiating group in the UNFCCC negotiations — filed a request before the opening plenaries with concrete suggestions for “balancing” the agenda so that it was less mitigation-centric — a hangover from the UNFCCC and KP’s work programme foci. Through these agenda corrections, the G77 also sought to launch the next phase of work using the precise language that Parties forged last December when agreeing by consensus on the COP21 decisions.
Forging North American relations at a biergarten on the Rhein.
The APA agenda dispute (and to a lesser extent, those in SBSTA and SBI) served as the opening salvo of a consistent campaign to address the constructive ambiguity that Parties had built into the Paris Agreement’s provisions very carefully. The art of compromise on display in Paris does not transition easily to the technical exercise in Bonn of translating those words into action. This difficulty stood out most strikingly for me on two agenda items: Paris Agreement Article 6 (“cooperative approaches”) and its relation to Article 5 (forests and other land use) and transparency and global stocktaking under Articles 13 and 14, including on finance. More to come soon on these specific topics.
Solar Energy Growth Really Heating Up
News about the increase in solar energy potential and development 
has been robust across all the climate news aggregators for some time. And, targeted outlets like the U.S-based Solar Energy Industries Association News (weekly) and the Australian-based Solar Daily abound with exciting stories. 
The overwhelming consensus is that this technology has really caught fire, as costs have dropped and attention to the growing dangers of climate change has expanded.
Global adoption is expected to get a substantial lift from the International Solar Alliance (ISA). We brought you news of this initiative, launched in Paris at COP21 (December 2015) by India and France. 
It now has a steering committee, an interim secretariat, and roughly 120 country members, focused primarily in the region between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. (See ISA’s Working Paper here.) Its ambitious goal of facilitating U.S. $1 trillion for solar development by 2030 became a pledge at ISA’s April meeting, held as a side event during the signing of the Paris Agreement. Joining co-hosts Piyush Goyal, India’s Minister of Power, Coal & Renewable Energy, and Ségolène Royal, France’s Minister of the Environment/CO21 President, were ministers and representatives of 25 countries. They also agreed to collaborate in scaling up currently small-scale solar technologies, pursue R&D, and build technology capacity, all with the aim to lower the cost of finance and facilitate investment.
The cost of solar power is already declining rapidly. Earlier this week, The National (a publication of Abu Dhabi Media) reported a new record-low price of U.S. 2.99 cents/Kwh in a bid by a consortium of developers to install an 800 MW set of solar projects in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This represents a 50% drop in just one year in the lowest price for solar, to a figure that is now below the cost of new coal-fired power in Dubai.
Here in the U.S., the #MillionSolarStrong campaign is sharing the news that more than 1 million domestic systems have been installed, 
with the 2 million mark estimated to be crossed by 2018. A sure sign that this technology has been mainstreamed, the campaign’s solar declaration has more than 80 significant organization and corporate signatories; and even Obama tweeted the hashtag.
Speaking of ‘catching on fire,’ Solar City just released interesting data and illustrative animations on solar’s “contagion” in the U.S. Researchers analyzed this trend in homeowner adoption a couple of years ago, and attributed it to “neighbor effects,” 
in which people living near new installations get a chance to readily talk to those new adopters about their decision, and can begin to see solar as more of a possibility for themselves. Incentives, including referral discounts and leasing as an alternative to buying, seem to be contributing, as well.
Overall, solar’s role as a mainstay of our global low-carbon energy future is quite a sizzling prospect.
How “well below 2°C” flew well-below the radar
On December 12, when the Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus, it contained bold new language on the long-term global temperature goal. Article 2 reads:
“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels…” (Article 2.1(a))
But, from where did this language come?
All through 
the ADP’s final year of negotiations, from Lima to Geneva to Bonn and back to Bonn, it never appeared in the successive drafts. The “well below 2°C” finally emerged in brackets at the last negotiating session before COP21, on the final day of ADP2-11.
The likely source? Something called the structured expert dialogue (SED).
The story begins back at COP16 in 2010, when Parties agreed to reduce emissions so that global temperature would not exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels. They also agreed to periodically review this goal to determine whether it was sufficient to meet the UNFCCC’s objective, and whether the Parties were achieving it. Importantly, the Parties decided at COP16 to consider strengthening the 2°C goal, “including in relation to a global average temperature rise of 1.5°C.”
This mandated review happened between June 2013 and February 2015 at a Joint SBSTA/SBI meeting. It was supported by a structured expert dialogue (SED) to “ensure the scientific integrity of the review through a focused exchange of views, information and ideas.” The SED involved more than 70 experts and Parties over 4 sessions. The group released its final report last May for all UNFCCC Parties to consider it at the 42nd session of the subsidiary bodies in June.
Two of the SED’s key messages were:
- “The world is not on track to achieve the long-term global goal, but successful mitigation policies are known and must be scaled up urgently.” (Message 8)
- “While science on the 1.5°C warming limit is less robust [making it difficult to compare differences between 2°C and 1.5°C], efforts should be made to push the defence line as low as possible.” (Message 10)
Message 10 also suggested that Parties consider a precautionary path: “aiming for limiting global warming as far below 2°C as possible, reaffirming the notion of a defence line or even a buffer zone keeping warming well below 2°C.”
While not offering the exact language on 1.5°C found in Article 2 of the Paris Agreement, the SED report clearly articulates climate change impacts already being experienced, limits to adaptation, and certain and non-linear increases in those impacts expected between 1.5 and 2°C.
Both IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) and the Third World Network (TWN) reported strong differences at the June UNFCCC meeting about what action Parties should take on the Review and SED report. AOSIS, the LDCs and others pushed for sending a draft decision to COP21 for a new long-term global temperature goal of “limiting warming to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” Saudi Arabia and China were both firmly against changing the long-term goal, and sought language simply acknowledging and appreciating the work/report. Though most Parties supported crafting a substantive conclusion and decision, the lack of consensus on content meant postponement to the SB43 (December 1-4) meeting in Paris. With Saudi Arabia and China (joined by Oman) continuing to block action at SB43, the COP Presidency was ultimately called on to shepherd its direct consideration by the COP.
On the ADP front, the Review and SED report found no apparent foothold in June. By Paris, though, its “well below 2°C” was in the draft and part of the hot debate on long-term temperature goal. The LDCs, AOSIS, the Africa Group and the 40+ country-strong Climate Vulnerable Forum (on which we’ve reported), fought hard for the goal to reference only 1.5°C. The “High Ambition Coalition” (on which we reported here), which included the EU and the U.S., offered strong support. The Saudis, backed by India and China, and unchallenged by the rest of OPEC, firmly blocked it, along with any reference to the SED report. The final compromise language was, in the end, a big step toward acknowledging the climate change dangers already present and the peril posed by a 2°C change.
COP21 did close with a decision (10/CP.21 para 4) that referenced the Review, “took note of the work of the structured expert dialogue,” and offered appreciation for those who participated in it. It also stated the new long-term temperature goal utilized in the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(a). “Well below 2°C” is well beyond what could have been.
Decoupling GHGs from GDP: Year 2
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released new data today showing that global GHG missions related to energy held steady again for the second year in a row while the global economy grew. Renewable energy was key to stabilizing emissions levels, with more than 90% of new energy generation coming from renewables – the highest level in more than 40 years.
From IEA director Fatih Birol’s perspective, “Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change. This means the decoupling of global emissions and economic growth is now confirmed.”
For more specific analysis, including the roles that the U.S. and China played in this result, read the press release and accompanying data set here.
China now sets its cap on energy consumption
China just announced in its 13th Five Year Plan (2016-202) that it will set an energy consumption cap. Its goal: to improve industrial efficiency and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The consumption cap will be 5 billion tons of standard coal equivalent by 2020. China also pledged to cut carbon intensity by 18% by the same deadline. The Five Year Plan nonetheless predicts that GDP will continue to grow, by 6.5% per year during this period. According to a new study from the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute (to be published in Climate Policy this week), China’s carbon emissions may have already peaked, due to a reduction in coal use and its economic slow down. As we blogged recently, China has already taken steps toward cutting 500 million tons of surplus coal capacity in the next five years.
China pledged in Paris to reduce its carbon intensity 60-65% below 2005 levels by 2030 and peak its GHG emissions by the end of next decade. Analysts believe that the top GHG emitter in the world will beat this target by at least five years.
Are US COP21 pledges in trouble? UPDATE
2/19/16 UPDATE: Since my post on Monday, Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, has weighed in. Speaking from Brussels, where he was meeting with the EU’s Climate and Energy Commissioner, Stern was quoted as saying “it is entirely premature, really premature to assume the Clean Power Plan will be struck down but, even if it were, come what may, we are sticking to our plan to sign, to join. We’re going to go ahead and sign the agreement this year.” He pointed out how different the situation President Obama faces when signing the US on to the Paris Agreement than President Clinton’s support of the Kyoto Protocol that was then abandoned by his successor, President George W. Bush. “Paris was seen as such a landmark, hard-fought, hard-won deal that, for the U.S. to turn round and say we will withdraw, that would inevitably give the country a kind of diplomatic black eye that I think a president of any party would be very loath to do.” He added: “We think we are going to prevail in the court but we are going to go ahead and sign the agreement this year. Period. And we are not in any way going to back away from our 2025 targets.”
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This has been the question of the week in the US environmental community (and to some degree, in the international community as well).
The US Supreme Court granted a stay on Tuesday to the plaintiffs challenging EPA’s authority to devise the Clean Power Plan (CPP) under its Clean Air Act rulemaking authority. In Paris and at home, the CPP has been described as the cornerstone of US pledges under the Paris Agreement.
While a stay is only a procedural decision that stops implementation of a challenged law during litigation, the fact that five out of nine SCOTUS justices granted it caused a collective gasp last Tuesday night in the enviro law community. Why?
First, and foremost, no one was expecting it. The plaintiffs’ motion for a stay had already been denied by the D.C. Circuit (which will hear the case on the merits in June). This ruling was accepted by both sides of the lawsuit as well grounded in precedent. In fact, many saw the appeal to the Supreme Court as a “hail Mary” pass. (No Cam Newton jokes here.) Second, the stay indicates that at least five justices think that the plaintiffs could be harmed by complying with a rule that, when it inevitably arrives at the Supreme Court after the D.C. Circuit’s decision, may be held invalid.
Reading the blogs and Tweets of the last six days, it’s safe to say that the jury is out on what this SCOTUS decision means for the CPP and for the Paris pledges. One slice of expert opinion talks everyone off the ledge by reminding us that it’s just a short-term procedural victory, not a decision on the merits. David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) embodies this effort in this interview.
On the impact of the stay at home, there’s a difference of opinion. The Washington Post reported that “about 48 hours after the court’s decision, major utility companies are reacting to the move with a collective shrug.” The largest trade association of electricity providers, Edison Electric Institute, was quoted saying that “electric utilities are investing in clean energy and pursuing energy efficiency” regardless of legal challenges to the CPP — even companies, like AEP, who are listed among the plaintiffs. Pointing to Congress’s recent renewal of clean-energy tax credits and increasing private sector investments in clean-energy projects, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy adds that “the CPP is underpinning a [market] transition that is already happening and will continue to happen.” States like New York and California immediately called press briefings to state their continued implementation of the CPP. A variety of state official responses, similar in tone, have been collected by the Georgetown Climate Center. Yet Justin Pidot of the University of Colorado School of Law reads the stay as a sign that the coal industry is “too big for EPA to regulate absent an express congressional directive.”
On the international impact of the stay, observers express concern at the high level of international relations more than in the nitty gritty detail of achieving the Paris pledges. Michael Gerrard of Columbia’s Center for Climate Change Law emphasizes that while the CPP is important to the US plan for mitigating GHG emissions, it’s not the only game in town. Gerrard points to several facts in his blog post on Wednesday that the mainstream media hasn’t clearly picked up. First, the CPP doesn’t fully kick in until well into the longer-range US INDC pledges. Citing the US’s Biennial Report (a required communication under the UNFCCC) that was filed just last month, Gerrard points out that the CPP’s actual emissions reductions do not begin until 2022, and thus don’t affect the 2020 pledge of reducing 17% below 2005 levels. In terms of the 2025 pledge of 26% to 28% reduction, Gerrard sees that the US was also relying on fuel economy and energy efficiency standards, phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, reducing methane emissions, and for the ultimate reach, counting forests and other vegetated land masses as GHG sinks.
In contrast, Michael Wara of Stanford Law School believes the US’s international reputation for making good on the Paris Agreement pledges — already weakened by our unreliable behavior on the Kyoto Protocol — took a hit from the stay, especially given our bilateral negotiations with China and India and the role that the CPP-based reductions played in them. (He also sees “significant ramifications” for the U.S. electric power sector given that continued uncertainty in regulating carbon hurts long-term electric utility investments, which could result in higher prices for consumers and competitive disadvantages in trade. (This post from the law firm of Stoel Reeves provides more details on this point.))
Now, with Justice Scalia’s death two days ago and the ensuing debate about who will appoint his replacement, the role of the Court in US domestic climate change law and its international commitments is even more acute.
Next steps for UNFCCC head Christiana Figueres?
This news just arrived in my inbox:
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC since 2010, will step down when her term ends on July 6, 2016.
In a message to “non-party stakeholders” issued today in Bonn and distributed to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and IGOs (intergovernmental organizations) accredited to the UNFCCC, she wrote:
“Friends, I write to confirm that I will serve out my term as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which finishes on July 6, 2016, and not accept an extension of my appointment. As you well know, the Paris Agreement is a historical achievement, built on years of increasing willingness to construct bridges of collaboration and solidarity across all boundaries. Governments deserve much credit for the remarkable outcomes of Paris, but so do you, the wider participants in the UNFCCC process. During many years you held the torch of the imperative high for all of us to see. Your support and your determination were unswerving. Your patience and your urgency were compelling. Much remains to be done, especially in the next five years, to ensure we turn good intentions into the reality we all want. I know you will continue to inject energy, passion and perseverance into this process. You can count on me to do the same.”
What’s next for the person that the New Yorker dubbed as the woman who could stop climate change? Leaping tall LEED platinum buildings in C40 cities around the world? Outpacing electric high-speed trains fed by solar and wind? Or maybe, more humbly, moving to New York and becoming the first female UN Secretary General?
Climate Change in 10,000 years
Leading climate change scientists from around the world published this week in Nature Climate Change a statement about the long-term impacts of our short-term policymaking. In light of all the celebration of the political good will embodied in the Paris Agreement, this statement is a profound reality check. From the abstract (with my bolding of text):
Most of the policy debate surrounding the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change has been framed by observations of the past 150 years as well as climate and sea-level projections for the twenty-first century. The focus on this 250-year window, however, obscures some of the most profound problems associated with climate change. Here, we argue that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period during which the overwhelming majority of human-caused carbon emissions are likely to occur, need to be placed into a long-term context that includes the past 20 millennia, when the last Ice Age ended and human civilization developed, and the next ten millennia, over which time the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change will grow and persist. This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies — not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond.
“It’s a statement of worry,” Raymond Pierrehumbert, an Oxford University geoscientist and one of the statement’s 22 authors, is quoted saying in the Washington Post. “And actually, most of us who have worked both on paleoclimate and the future have been terrified by the idea of doubling or quadrupling CO2 right from the get-go.”
So what should we worry about? Sea level rise above all else. This NASA video helps us really see (via a line graph superimposed on images of receding land ice) how quickly its glaciers have melted in just 10 years time.
The Post ends on the increased capacity we humans have to calculate the long term impacts of our pollution with a high measure of precision, even if we’re a little slow on the uptake. “All of this coming together means that a conversation about increasingly long-range forecasts, and about the millennial scale consequences of today’s greenhouse gas emissions, is growing within the scientific world. The question remains whether a similar conversation will finally take hold in the public and political one.”
Welcome to the Anthropocene.