Posts by: Kyle
This article was first published in the Climate Action Network’s (CAN) ECO newsletter. It was written by and represents the views of CAN members. Read the full newsletter here!
Despite the Climate Convention objective in Article 2 to stabilize emissions before food production is threatened, impacts of climate change on food production are already being felt around the world. Floods have decimated wheat fields in Pakistan and rice fields in Thailand. Heat waves have seriously reduced yields of Russian wheat and US maize. Drought cost Texas agriculture US$8 billion last year and tens of thousands of lives in the Horn of Africa.
Local and mostly small-scale food producers feed the vast majority of the global population. They are extremely vulnerable to climate change. This in turn threatens food security across the world. As temperatures rise and the weather becomes more unpredictable, large areas of land will become unsuitable for smallholders’ current agricultural practices. Enabling smallholders to adapt, protect their livelihoods and contribute to food security become crucial objectives.
Adaptation is the most urgent and compelling need for smallholders, particularly in developing countries, who have the least resilience and means to cope. This is why the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) must consider the impacts of climate change across all scales of food production and find approaches to ensuring food security for all.
The CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) has already published many sobering reports on the impacts on food production. Ghana will lose cocoa production on huge portions of its territory. Tea production in the highlands of East Africa will migrate up slopes and significantly contract in area. Developing country economies are often quite dependent on valuable export crops whose production will significantly diminish. Climate change and agriculture conversations will bleed over into the negotiations on loss and damage.
In order for small-scale farmers to be able to adapt and to build their adaptive capacity, they must be enabled to practice farming systems that are resilient to long-term climate change, including indigenous practices that strengthen the ecosystems which they are a part of. This form of agro-ecological smallholder farming and other forms of sustainable and climate-resilient food production should be promoted.
So, whilst the UNFCCC considers agriculture in SBSTA, ECO asks Parties to provide scientific and technical advice regarding biodiverse, resilient agriculture based on agro-ecological principles, and explore appropriate technology development and transfer.
Image: UN, Oxfam America
You can read the full ECO newsletter here.
With small-scale farmers being particularly exposed to climate events, the SBSTA could consider in more depth the issue of food security in a changing climate.
Read post →This article was first published in the Climate Action Network’s (CAN) ECO newsletter. It was written by and represents the views of CAN members. Read the full newsletter here!
Over the past week, we’ve heard discussions in a variety of forums here in Bonn on how to address the urgency of climate change by increasing emissions reductions and mo-bilizing enough climate finance to help fund the transition to a climate resilient future for all. Well, ECO has found just the source to help both of these efforts – end fossil fuel subsidies by 2015!
Let’s start by raising mitigation ambition. The UNFCCC re-ceived many submissions on raising ambition. 111 countries were represented in the sub-missions citing phasing out fossil fuel subsidies as a po-tential source of additional emission reductions repre-sent. And how often does that happen?
Perhaps all 111 countries saw the recent statements by the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, who said that phasing out fossil fuel subsidies could provide half of the emission reductions needed to stave off dangerous climate change between now and 2020. Now, because the devil is often in the details, phasing out these government handouts could go a substantial way in helping close the gigatonne gap. The ambition work programme under the ADP would be well-served to include this in its deliberations.
Now, on to finance. Recent estimates show that fossil fuel subsidies in rich countries could be in the tens of billions of US dollars, to perhaps as much as $100 billion. How about, instead, governments spend that money to support climate change fighting efforts? ECO encourages delegates to include this in discussions of both short-term and long-term finance.
While we’re at it, let’s all make sure we’re talking about the same stuff. The numbers quoted above are estimates, mainly because the data out there isn’t transparent enough to allow for more precise figures. But, wouldn’t you know, the UNFCCC could provide just the tools to increase transparency in this area through its national communications and biennial reports. And since so many UNFCCC parties want to remove these subsidies, why not report on their existence and efforts to remove them? Who doesn’t like taking credit for doing good things, after all?
ECO hopes parties here at the UNFCCC will take note of the multiple benefits of removing fossil fuel subsidies. ECO encourages delegates to speak to their colleagues in the G20 and Rio+20 negotiations as well, so that progress can be made wherever possible, in order to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2015.
Images: Friends Of the Earth and EcoWatch
You can read the full ECO newsletter here.
Guest blog from the ECO editorial board on the all benefits of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies
Read post →This article was first published in the Climate Action Network’s (CAN) ECO newsletter. It was written by and represents the views of CAN members. Read the full newsletter here!
Developing countries have long insisted on the need for transparent and coordinated provision of financial support, to enable independent review of the extent to which commitments are fulfilled, as well as maximise the effectiveness of the funding. Moreover, transparency is vital to ensuring that the funds are equitably distributed over all developing countries in need of support, with priority for the most vulnerable developing countries.
At present, though there have been some positive steps taken in this direction, unless ECO was not invited that magical day, there is no common framework for measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) of international climate finance that fully captures existing financial flows.
ECO was happy to hear that at the end of 2011 the European Commission proposed a new EU regulation (referred to as the “MMR” Regulation) on monitoring and reporting for EU climate finance. The MMR (yet another acronym that delegates and observers should learn by heart) will standardize climate finance reporting requirements for EU Member States. We are glad to hear that the proposal is going through the EU legislative process this year, just in time to monitor the EU’s post-2012 financial commitments for climate action.
But the MMR still needs guidance from EU Member States on key concepts and methodologies to be included in the legislation: what is meant by climate finance and in particular “private climate finance”? What is “new and additional” climate finance and how are the baselines set for measuring this? How should the MMR count the climate-relevant activities and outcomes when reporting on projects with broader objectives?
In the grand tradition of EU stakeholder consultation processes, ECO knows that its ideas will be read and considered, and so takes the opportunity to recommend that the MMR include the following:
- detailed information on where the money is going
- comparable information that can be aggregated
- sources and recipient institutions as well as the channels used need to be visible in order to keep track of the financial flow
- Also, for this process to be really transparent, it is crucial that this information be made accessible to third parties, including recipient countries and NGOs and that the reported information be quadruple-checked by independent finance experts
But all this being said, ECO would like to remind all parties that any MMR or MRV proposal does not make any sense as long as there is no finance to MMR or MRV (or whatever you want to call it). At the end of the day, we need developed countries to start pledging substantial, scaled-up climate funding for 2013 onwards. Or the MMR will be yet another empty shell.
And because ECO knows that parties want to hear more about the major MRV reform behind the obscure acronym, the ACT Alliance and CAN-Europe went to great lengths to organize a side event on the role of private finance in climate action next Tuesday.
ECO will definitely be there.
Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You can read the full ECO newsletter here.
Guest blog from the ECO editorial board on transparent and coordinated provision of financial support
Read post →This article was first published in the Climate Action Network’s (CAN) ECO newsletter. It was written by and represents the views of CAN members. Read the full newsletter here!
ECO wonders if delegates usually idle away their waiting time in airports by brushing up on their diplomat lingo for use at international negotiations. From a glossary of terms, ECO derives that the wording “noting with deep concern” can be interpreted as one of the strongest possible expression for outrage, in this case for lack of progress and substance in closing the ambition gap.
ECO, never giving up on any Party, just has to assume that this “deep concern”, and its translation, is also shared, somewhere deep inside, by those Parties whose current pledges are possibly among the reasons why there is such concern. It is against this backdrop that ECO was pleased by some helpful interventions at yesterday’s first ADP plenary where several country groupings made clear that the work plan for urgently increasing ambition is something to work in parallel to the grand task of crafting the 2015 protocol. This ‘urgency’ agenda item is needed to agree on concrete steps to close the gap between current pledges and where emissions need to be in 2020 to be consistent with a realistic 2°C emissions pathway, and to keep 1.5°C within reach.
In particular, ECO liked the notion that the ambition work plan should focus on the immediate ambition gap and be seen as an iterative process of analysing the gap, identifying further options to narrow the gap, adopting them and repeating those steps until the gap is closed. And do that preferably on an annual basis, leading to concrete steps at every COP as long as necessary.
Surely not difficult for all those sharing the “deep concern”. ECO notes that this would require, here in Bonn, substantive work on the available options, as well as agreeing what to work on over 2012 and beyond, with further workshops, submissions and technical papers, and even, as suggested at the plenary, a high-level ministerial gathering ®C leading to first tangible results for a COP decision in Qatar. A dedicated contact group, as suggested at yesterday’s plenary, is the thing to start with here in Bonn.
ECO wonders, however, if developed country Parties sharing the “deep concern” have understood that this would require, as a first step, moving to the top end of their pledges, especially in those cases (down under) where internal government documents show that conditions to move up from the low end of the pledged range have already been met; or where studies show that moving to the top end would be beneficial for the region’s economy (a region a little north of Africa). Or in those otherworldy cases where current pledges are even below CP1 targets. ECO also wonders if those developing countries that have not yet identified NAMAs and the support needed to implement (some of) them are part of the game too ®C ECO would be excited to hear from, and report on, any such developments.
As Parties retreat over the weekend to prepare their presentations for Monday’s workshop on options to increase ambition, ECO would like to echo what one group of highly vulnerable countries noted in the plenary: raising ambition immediately was always part of the Durban package. If the Qatari COP fails us all on that, then Durban may be remembered as the summit where we saved the climate negotiations but not the climate. On Monday, ECO wants to hear options for the latter.
You can read the full ECO newsletter here.
Expectations from ECO on the parties in relation to their “deep concern” regarding the gap in ambition
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Will countries positions in the climate change negotiations contribute to building a safe “house” for all? - from ECO
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