Month: December 2015

INDC is one of the most frequently mentioned words at the COP ground. INDC stands for Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, which constitutes the Parties’ (i.e. countries who have ratified the UNFCCC) plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. INDCs provide an alternative to a top-down approach to emissions targets, which have failed due to gridlock and disagreement about countries’ individual commitments.

As the name indicates, the concept of INDCs creates significant flexibility for governments to formulate and commit to their own pace and magnitude for emission reductions. But with this flexibility comes some tough questions – who would enforce these INDCs? How can they be monitored?  Monitoring and verification, so far, continues to be an unresolved issue. The updating of the INDCs is also a pertinent question, as they are meant to set realistic goals with what is known today with a view to becoming more ambitious over time, as new knowledge – such as new technology or new pricing on existing low carbon technology – become available.

And, then, there is the question of whether the INDCs will add up to the goal of keeping global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels?  A new report by the UNEP on the emissions gap indicates that:  “Full implementation of unconditional INDCs results in emission level estimates in 2030 that are most consistent with scenarios that limit global average temperature increase to below 3.5 °C (range: 3 – 4 °C) by 2100 with a greater than 66 % chance.” In other words, the current INDC commitments put the world on track for 3.5 °C by 2050, nearly twice the limit agreed upon at COP15 in Copenhagen. While this is not good news, the event we attended this morning discussing the report emphasized that the flexibility built in to the INDCs can permit the ratcheting up of the ambitions.  Some countries here, particularly developing countries with high levels of vulnerability, have pushed to include the 1.5 degrees target as opposed to the 2 degrees. The current draft language includes in brackets – i.e. as possible but yet undecided – “below 1.5 °C” or “well below 2 °C”.

Despite potential shortcomings, INDCs also offer advantages: they have helped to bring almost all countries on board with plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and they aid in the creation of differentiated targets that allow each nation to address its most pressing issues.

We will be attending more events on INDCs and will post relevant updates. You might want to visit the following website for updates and graphs on INDCs:  http://cait.wri.org/indc/\

– Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, Ayse Kaya

Follow us throughout the week on Twitter (@SwarthmoreCOP21) and Snapchat (SwarthmoreCOP21) to get real-time updates.

We kicked off the second week of negotiations by attending the Joint High-Level Segment of the COP21/CMP11, which included both pledges and statements of views by governmental ministers and other high-level officials, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Swarthmore alumna, UNFCCC Secretary General Christiana Figueres.

Ban Ki-moon urged delegates to heed growing calls from civil society for ambitious action on climate, citing the 800,000-strong global Global Climate March during the COPs opening weekend and the $3.4 trillion in funds divested from fossil fuels. He went on to say: “Outside these negotiating halls, there is a rising global tide of support for a strong, universal agreement. All of us have a […] duty to heed those voices.”

Figueres echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the presence of “unprecedented mobilization” for climate action. She went on to say: “The challenge we face now is to crystalize that call into a cohesive legal framework that brings the world together in action and implementation.”

Christiana Figueres addressing the High-Level Segment

In addition to the remarkable support coming from civil society, there is also an unprecedented mandate for action amongst heads of state this year. Last week, the leaders of 150 different countries gathered at the COP for the first high-level segment. This format – with the heads of state initiating the conference but leaving before the negotiations reached full swing – reverses the set-up from earlier years. (In)famously, the 2009 talks in Copenhagen resulted in failure and embarrassment for many of the world’s leaders, who came at the conclusion of the conference but were unable to salvage the stalled deal.

This year’s change in format served the dual goal of avoiding further embarrassment while also galvanizing momentum for a legally binding agreement early on in the process. This tactic appears to have worked in generating will for the process before the “sausage making” by the political negotiators begins in earnest this week. Today, at the high-level segment, we repeatedly heard the ministers referencing the first high-level segment and the strong showing from heads of state.

During his remarks this morning, COP President Larent Fabius highlighted the newly formed Paris Committee, another recent addition to traditional COP protocol. This committee is an open-ended, informal grouping of all Parties that will aim to overcome differences in the production of a first draft of the Paris agreement by December 9. While observers cannot attend the Paris Committee discussions, in the interest of transparency, the Committee’s deliberations will be teleconferenced to other meeting rooms, so that observers can, well, observe. The emphasis on inclusiveness and transparency seems to be an attempt to correct past mistakes.  In the past, negotiators have relied on the formation of exclusive, small groups that deliberate behind closed doors.

But even this year’s modified format is not immune from questions of fairness and inclusivity. Specifically, delegation size becomes a particular issue for informal negotiations, which pervade different aspects of the COP meetings.  Since delegation sizes from the Parties tend to differ across richer versus poorer nations, the larger delegations have higher capacity at these negotiations (as well as in others).  Despite the COP’s consensus based structure, there is by no means equality in representation and voice amongst the nations represented here. The next couple of days will make clear whether this inequity within the delegations will impede the emergence of a fair and just agreement.

– Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, and Ayse Kaya

Follow us throughout the week on Twitter (@SwarthmoreCOP21) and Snapchat (SwarthmoreCOP21) to get real-time updates.

Indy and Dakota have done a great job of summarizing the current situation in their latest post, so I encourage you to read that.  Now that I’m back at home, I just wanted to add my voice in welcoming our Swarthmore colleagues Prof. Ayse Kaya, Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, and Nathaniel Graf, who are arriving in France this weekend.  I look forward to their news and insights over the coming week.

And this week promises to be exciting.  To use the phrase that I heard several times in the past few days, this week “the ministers arrive,” the higher-level officials with more power to make meaningful concessions and hammer out the final agreement.

I’ve really appreciated the chance to share my experiences with you this past week, and I may yet have a post or two to share as I continue to reflect and take in the events of this coming week.  I remain optimistic about the outcome.   I had the good fortune of hearing former Vice President Al Gore speak on Friday, and he expressed his optimism with a quote from one of my favorite poets.  It really resonated with me, so I’ll let Wallace Stevens have the last word:

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.

We’ve talked about “the negotiations” a lot, but what are the negotiators actually doing during those hours that they spend behind closed doors?  They’re talking about language.  I got a chance to see that first-hand (albeit at a slight remove) today.  I was in a hallway in the building where most of the negotiations are taking place, and one of the video monitors in the hallway was showing a feed from one of the rooms.  Mostly the video was of individual country delegates speaking, but briefly it showed the image above, display the section of the agreement text that presumably was the subject of current discussion.

At first glance, it looks pretty dull—most of us have edited texts before, and sometimes argued over wording details.   But if you look closely at the paragraphs above (which are on page 28 of the new draft text released this morning), and think about how things differ if one option vs. the other is chosen, some of these things really make a difference in outcomes.  Text in brackets indicates different possible wordings (per the U.N. editorial conventions), so if you look at Option 1, there’s a big difference between choosing “Decides” (it will really happen) vs. “Invites the President of the COP” (might or might not happen, depending on what the President does).  And either of those is pretty different from Option 2, where it’s certain that nothing will happen before 2020.

And what’s happening (or possibly not happening) here is “stock-taking”, getting together to assess progress, and possibly increase effort, toward the goal of decreasing future warming.  And what precisely is that goal (“referred to Article 3, paragraph 1”)?  It is—you guessed it—still being negotiated, but it reads in part (after referring to yet a different article and paragraph):

“Hold the increase in the global average temperature [below 1.5 °C [or] [well] below 2 °C] above pre- industrial levels by ensuring deep cuts in global greenhouse gas [net] emissions;”

Clearly there is [work still to be done] [progress still to be made] [drama ahead]—stay tuned.

 

“The pace has been slow and we have many issues that remain unresolved.”

“…progress was too slow.”

“We need a change in the mode of work.”

“The parties have engaged actively… but the pace, in my view, is nowhere near fast enough.”

“The parties have expressed clearly… support for transparency.  Like others, the pace is not good enough.  We will continue to work tonight.”

One after another, thus went the summary statements about the negotiations from the facilitators of the various groups.  This was part of an update last night on the progress of the negotiations so far.  It was attended by the lead negotiators of the various countries, as well as the COP President.  As you can see, there was a consensus that not enough progress is being made toward the goal of having an agreed-upon text by noon on Saturday.

After the updates from the facilitators, the chair of the meeting opened the floor to the individual country representatives who were present.  At that point, the tone and focus changed dramatically.  The ambassador from South Africa, speaking on behalf of the G77 (a coalition of developing countries) and China, expressed “some concerns with the process.”  She spoke of the proliferation of spinoff and informal discussions, sometimes on the same issue and taking place simultaneously.  She also noted that sometimes these were announced at the last minute, and asked for better advance notification of schedules.

In addition to concerns about scheduling, she made some specific requests on behalf of the countries for which she was speaking.  One concrete request was for the UNFCCC to compile the various edits that had been produce so far in the various negotiating groups, and to produce a new master (but still provisional) text that would be made available to all parties in the morning.  I assume that the goal of this was to allow them (and everyone else) to get a better sense of where things stand, since issues being discussed in one part of the text will have impact on other parts of the text.  (The chair of the session later agreed to this request, and the new text is out this morning.)

After South Africa spoke, the representative from Malaysia spoke, saying that he was speaking on behalf of like-minded developing countries.  He said that he supported everything in the previous statement, adding that the pace of the negotiations was “punishing.”  As an example, he cited three parallel processes on mitigation taking place in three difference rooms.  He said, “We cannot sacrifice a durable agreement at the altar of expediency,” saying that some of the countries were beginning to feel left out.

Apparently this is a perennial problem at the COPs.  The smaller and/or less-developed countries have smaller delegations, and thus it is harder for them to have a presence at multiple sessions taking place simultaneously, and to keep up long negotiations that can stretch well into the evening hours.  In fact, some of the observers who are here come to COP specifically to help smaller states navigate the process, so that they have extra bodies to track what is going on in various parallel sessions (though observers have much less access than party delegates do).

I don’t have the experience to gauge whether these concerns are worse at this particular COP, given the urgency and the relatively short deadline of trying to agree on a provisional text by Saturday, and how much this is viewed as part of the process.  But having read about this before the COP, it was interesting to see it playing out in real time.

After these statements, several other countries were given the floor to make statements.  One interesting bit of procedure that I noted: it appears that parties request the floor by turning their country nameplates on their side, so that they are sticking up in the air.  (You can see this in the photo above.)   I couldn’t see everything that was happening (we were watching on closed-circuit TV from another room), but everyone who spoke had an upended nameplate, and they put it back down when they finished speaking, so this appeared to be what was going on.

Some of the remaining discussion amounted to parties saying to each other, “No you need to be more flexible,” albeit in a diplomatic way.  Other countries weighed in with additional comments on the fast pace or the need for progress.

The final statement came from the representative from Mexico, who said, “We have talked about urgency for a long time, but this is the place to show it.”  The negotiations are continuing today, and it will be interesting to see whether the collective sense of urgency produces more progress.

Today, I started out the COP by attending the YOUNGO meeting and then heading over to a press conference held with the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga because I wanted to get the live opinions on the negotiations from a Head of State. Tuvalu is one of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) that has a population of just over 10,000 people and around 10 sq miles of land area. It is also especially susceptible to changes in sea level as well as storms and typhoons because of its low lying land-mass (just 15 ft above sea level) and a major concern is that sea level rises will cause Tuvalu to become inhabitable and potentially even force relocation of its citizens in the coming decades. With this background in mind, I settled into a seat near the front and pulled out the camera to record what I anticipated to be an thought-provoking speech. I was not disappointed, and there were a lot of memorable statements to be recounted.

After making a round of introductions to other dignitaries in the room, Enele got straight to the point. “Tuvalu is suffering.” He reiterated that a 1.5 degree Celsius cap was essential for the survival of the islands. He then pushed onto the negotiations, citing his support for a legally binding agreement to come out of the COP and sticking a point in to the Loss and Damages discussion about how if framed properly there would be a wider agreement between parties on this matter. “This is not about loss and damages, this is about survival.” was Enele’s reply and an adequate one I think for the PM of an island nation.  He then moved on to discussing how he felt things were moving along at the negotiating table, and this next statement sums things up quite adequately. “The process has been very slow, very (un)transparent, and there’s a lot of twists and turns that small nations like Tuvalu cannot follow because of logistics. And that defines a very unjust process already.”  This was followed by an even stronger statement about the impacts of political foot-dragging, “There is always a tactic of delaying until the last minute, and then being dumped upon, by something that is totally weak and is not worth the paper it is written on as we saw in Copenhagen.” Bang, no beating around the bush. Enele continued on, asking other parties not to utilize this as a tactic even citing the US as a culprit in dragging down negotiations and appealing directly to COP Presidency followed by another call, specifically to the leadership of the EU (Germany and the Netherlands in particular). for a legally binding solution and cooperation on loss and damages.

He then voiced his  desire for mechanisms that include regular and consistent reviews of the actions of their parties to meet their INDCs and mentioned Tuvalu’s impressive commitment to switch to 100% renewable energy by 2020. He then alluded to the Kyoto Protocol as a cautionary tale for the Paris agreement, finishing up this portion of his speech with another call to not hit a dead-end like in Copenhagen.

Finally, Enele switched gears to talk about financial mechanisms and their impact (or rather lack of impact on Tuvalu). Labeling the current situation as “unforunate” the Prime Minister described the inability of low-resource SIDS such as Tuvalu to submit sound, and scientifically justified proposals to obtain funding through UN sources such as the Green Climate Fund. “Bureaucracy is taking over. Not the parties. The parties that need resources such as the Green Climate Fund are being neglected.” He followed with a call for parties to do away with such “conditionalities” and to consider the vulnerability of nations rather than the quality of their proposals. Lastly, Enele used the CDM as an example to make a pitch for renewable sources of funding to be added to the current financing mechanisms so that money is not simply being siphoned off to the abyss of climate financing and that Least Developed Countries (LDCs) who have contributed the least to climate change are not continually being forced to finance their own adaptation which he labelled as a final “great injustice”.

It was hard to hear from Enele that the talks were still too slow to keep up with the demands of SIDS, but his talk inspired some hope in me. If a country as small as Tuvalu can put forth so much effort to push for change and still keep up hope despite being completely disadvantaged, it stands to reason that the US should have no reason to drag its feet. As a representative from a large, well-funded, and well-equipped delegation, this talk made me rethink my perspective on what needs to happen here at Paris. Having an SIDS perspective was really invaluable, and it is really important to keep these vulnerable countries in mind moving forward. Their voices matter too.