Swarthmore at COP29

Tonight, as the Malaysian minister declared to a vast conference room packed full of people, “everybody seems unhappy.”  As the third-to-last day of COP-21 came to a close for observers (negotiators will remain at le Bourget longer into the night), the prospect of an ambitious agreement seemed tenuous. Despite the fact that the new version of the draft text released today boasts a ¾ reduction in square brackets (though, some delegates remained unhappy about the deletions), serious disagreements remained amongst the parties.

Let’s rewind to earlier in the day.  In the morning, observer groups, ranging from BINGO, to RINGO, to indigenous peoples’ organizations, got a chance to have a briefing with Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, as well as H.E. Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, President’s Special Envoy to Observers at COP 21/CMP 11.  Vidal served as President of COP 20 and is here in Paris as both the minister of Peru and the conference’s envoy to civil society. Throughout the briefing, various organizations voiced their discontent with the lack of access to negotiations given to civil society. Participants were clearly concerned with finance and differentiation, among other issues, but felt that the meetings lacked transparency and an appropriate avenue for them to voice their concerns. In a candid response, Figueres said that this COP outcome will be a fundamentally “intergovernmental agreement,” and that, in the end, it is the national parties who will have to reach consensus. However, she guaranteed the observers that the agreement “is not going to be moving into the direction of national interests,” but instead will “be moving into convergence, onto common ground.” Yet, despite the discontents voiced, there were also moments of laughter and applause.  For instance, when Figueres received presents from one of the indigenous people’s groups (see picture), the room broke into applause. The group presented her with gifts as well as a message, “we must all grow in the same direction.”

Then, at 3pm, we received the first draft text of the Paris agreement in a meeting that lasted about five to ten minutes.  Observers, and other non-Party participants of the conference, could get the text right after its release from the “Documents” booth.  We wish we could have taken a picture of the chaotic crowd clustered around the booth with hands sticking up in the air for a copy, but we were a part of the crowd with no free hand for a picture!

Now the Parties (and everyone else) had time to study the text, consult with their groups and others, and reconvene at 8pm, for tonight’s Comite de Paris meeting (Paris Committee – see our earlier blog).

At tonight’s session, which lasted until about 10:30 pm, many countries’ interventions expressed forceful and seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints on the future of the agreement. Once again, the G77 + China maintained a strong presence/support base amongst the speakers. The minister from South Africa spoke first as the representative of this group. She outlined the substantial work that still needs to be done with regard to differentiation, adaptation, implementation, capacity building, and loss and damages. Other developing and least developed countries echoed her statement and added additional concerns. A common theme within their interventions was praise for the strong language supporting a 1.5 degree goal, but a fear that this goal will be futile without the appropriate implementation and financing mechanisms. As the representative for Venezuela noted, the current INDCs allow temperatures to rise to 3+ degrees from pre industrial levels. Without more substantial contributions, an agreement on 1.5 degrees would be rendered meaningless.

In stark contrast to the G77 + China was the Umbrella group*.  The Umbrella Group was represented by Australia, whose delegate expressed frustration at the lack of balance in the draft agreement. The group seems to feel that their acquiescence to the 1.5 degree goal warrants significant concessions from developing countries that have not yet been made. For example, one huge issue is how stringent the monitoring, reporting, and verification of the mitigation commitments should be, with countries like China preferring to retain sovereignty over reporting, while others, like the EU, pushing for a review every five years.

Notably absent from tonight’s proceedings was the voice of the United States. Although the U.S. is a member of the umbrella group, our negotiators themselves remained silent throughout the meeting. Earlier in the week Secretary Kerry stated that the U.S. would be willing to support the 1.5 degree goal, so long as other countries were willing to compromise on loss and damages. But tonight, neither issue was addressed by our delegation. Whether or not this was an overt statement of dissatisfaction with the course of negotiations, not having the USA participate in an almost universal discussions of the new draft of the Paris agreement was disheartening and surprising.

In all, tonight’s events struck us as a diametric shift from the positive tenor of yesterday’s Comite de Paris meeting. This COP has been applauded as calm, orderly, and polite in comparison to other conferences. But as some of the delegates spoke, their exhaustion, exasperation, and sadness was palpable. We could clearly hear two divergent tones coming from the speakers. From some (the EU, Japan, Australia and others) came a terse dissatisfaction with what they have found to be intransigence on the part of many developing countries. However, these and other more procedural interventions were punctuated by sincere pleas for swift and ambitious action from many countries (particularly Small Island Developing nations, or SIDs). The minister from Barbados, for example, said that he was “not here begging for sympathy,” but that inaction on climate change would mean the “certain extinction of [his] people.” For those most vulnerable, the fate of their countries still rests within square brackets.  

There is very little time left and many differences to be ironed out.  Hopes are pinned on two long nights.

-Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, Ayse Kaya

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

*From the UNFCCC site:  The Umbrella Group is “a loose coalition of non-EU developed countries which formed following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Although there is no formal list, the Group is usually made up of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Norway, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the US.”

In the official negotiations and media coverage of them, there is substantial focus on national governments, especially the submission of INDCs.  However, sub-national levels, including sub-national states, provinces, cities, regions, are playing an increasingly important role in climate action. Multiple panels this week have focused on their role in taking leadership on mitigation and adaptation. Here, we wish to highlight one of them hosted by the Climate Group and the Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development (nrg4SD).

This event focused on a growing network of subnational governments collaborating on climate leadership. The Climate Leadership members collectively account for 331 million people, 11% of global GDP and 2.6 Gigatons CO2 emissions.

Climate Leadership members list

The heads of these subnational governments cited the importance of ensuring constituent support for renewable energy and decarbonization in order to create durable and ambitious climate action policy under sometimes hostile national governments. They also emphasized that one of the ways in which constituency support can be generated is to highlight the important role transition to green energy can play in job creation. Across multiple panels, subnational leaders described as critical to gaining support policies to create a ‘just transition.’ A ‘just transition’ refers to the a transition away from fossil fuels that ensures a) working class people who are part of the fossil fuel economy as well as those most impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry receive economic assistance and b) that new renewable energy development takes place in a manner that increases democratic participation and promotes racial, economic, and gender justice.

While climate change will affect every part of the planet, for many, particularly in working class communities, economic concerns are also very important. Often, especially in the United States (as Governors Shumlin and Inslee of Vermont and Washington,respectively, have noted this week), economic prosperity is framed as in opposition to action on climate, which dampens support for climate action. By ensuring that renewable energy development benefits workers and local communities, the just transition framework provides an opportunity for politicians and activists to counter this framing.

First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon talking about the Scotland’s transition to renewable energy

Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, described how direct public benefits were critical to building public support for renewables in a country where many work in the coal industry and there was intense skepticism about renewables from an economic and, to a lesser extent, aesthetic perspective. Today, Scotland generates more electricity from renewable energy than coal and gas combined and aims to produce 100% of their electricity from renewables by 2020 (though this target is looking increasingly unlikely). The Minister emphasized the 10 million pounds per year, Scottish communities receive due to the Community Benefit and Ownership program. She notes: “local energy now helps to fund energy efficiency schemes, fuel poverty alleviation programmes and befriending projects which reduce isolation for elderly people. They meet local priorities because they are run by local communities.” (Despite this program’s benefits, not all companies participate in the program because it is not mandatory.)

Sturgeon and Vermont Governor Shumlin both talked about the importance of community input and governance in increasing support for renewables among the public. In particular, Shumlin noted the local town-based Energy Committees, which allows community members to contribute to decision-making, push for lower energy costs, and pressure reluctant politicians to take action. Similarly, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne expressed her regret that Ontario did not focus enough on public participation and attributed lack of public support (and some active opposition) to lack of community engagement and benefits.\

Moreover, cities, states/provinces, and regions provide an opportunity to connect the localized impacts of climate change to climate action and renewable energy. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Durban Mayor James Nxumalo both emphasized the importance of educating the public to connect local severe weather incidents with climate change to increase support for renewables and action on climate.

However, subnational governments do not operate on an island. National action can support, but often threatens this local progress. Wynne and Sturgeon noted how Canadian President Stephen Harper (who just lost office this fall) and UK Premier David Cameron have hurt attempts to shift to renewable energy through actions such as cuts in renewable subsidies. And, as is well-known, the US Congress contains many skeptics on climate change, which prevent substantial subsidies for renewable energy in the first place.

-Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, Ayse Kaya

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

Having scored tickets to the Paris Committee’s (see our earlier blog) December 8th meeting, we huddled into the large plenary room at 7pm.  Two of our three tickets came from the YOUNGO group and one of our tickets was from the RINGO group.  Both organizations are given a limited number of tickets for the plenary events, which they distribute to their constituency members.  Even though we could have watched the Committee’s deliberations through teleconferencing in nearby rooms, we felt excited to witness the whole of the vast room, filled with negotiators, academics, simultaneous translators, and students.

 

At 7.30pm (half an hour after the publicized time of the start of the meeting), dozens of people were still flowing into the room every minute, even though the discussions had already commenced.  Just then, one of the Party delegates from India asked to have the floor to remark that while empty seats remained for Party members, they were not being allowed in and being told the room was full. In response, the COP President, Minister Laurent Fabius, reassured the representative that he would have this mistake corrected immediately.  Whether or not it was the intervention from the President, by 7.45, there was barely any standing room left in the massive conference hall.

 

During the event, different facilitators of the Paris Committee reported back on their consultations, which almost always included bilateral negotiations as well as multilateral negotiations.  The facilitators lead each of the committee’s work streams in pairs, typically with one representative from a developing country and one from a developed country.  During their presentations, many facilitators applauded the common ground found in their negotiations and praised the increased inclusiveness and transparency of the proceedings.

It seemed from this briefing that the 1.5 Celsius language is becoming a real possibility.   Yet, the two sticking points — differentiation and loss & damage — continue to divide the Parties.  Many of the facilitators emphasized that their negotiations were going to continue that evening, particularly with regard to these two issues.  Following the facilitators’ reports, the floor was opened to all Parties. Speaking first, the South African representative expressed the necessity to allow ample time for all Parties and regional groupings to consider the draft of the agreement, which is expected today (Wednesday the 9th) at around 1pm.  Her intervention emphasized the position of G77+China that the Paris text should be “Party-owned”.  As representatives continued to take the floor, an impressive number of delegates referenced the G77+China.  These Parties expressed particular concern with Article 2 of the draft agreement, the section that most explicitly deals with human rights, differentiation, and equity.
As we were leaving the negotiating hall, Al Gore’s impassioned call from his speech earlier in the day rang in our ears — “Our best hope for addressing the climate crisis before it is too late is: Here Now.”

 

-Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, Ayse Kaya

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

Today was Gender Day at COP21, and given the importance of the day, we attended a fascinating panel on the issue of gender and climate change – Experiences from grassroots: Why we need Gender Responsive Climate Finance – in the Netherlands’ government pavilion.  This panel demonstrated the importance of side events that bring together both officials (be they from governments or multilateral institutions) and non-governmental organizations and grassroots movement leaders.  In this case, the panel included a dialogue between the NGO representatives from the Central American Women’s Fund, the Global Greengrants Fund, The Samdhana Institute, and AKSI! Indonesia, and a Board member from the Green Climate Fund, to which hopes are pinned for climate adaptation and green economy funds in the poor countries.

 

This was such a rich panel that it is difficult to do it justice in a blog post.  While the discussion presented hopeful prospects for the future of climate finance, some of the panelists and members of the audience were clearly discouraged by the immense amount of work left to do in this area.

 

On the upside, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), as the Board member stressed, is the first multilateral financing institution to incorporate gender into its mission and policies from the start.  As GCF documentation indicates:  “The Fund will strive to maximize the impact of its funding for adaptation and mitigation, and seek a balance between the two, while promoting environmental, social, economic and development co-benefits and taking a gender sensitive approach.”  The potential for the GCF to support all sorts of organizations working to improve the lives of women across the world is huge.

 

However, the GCF’s funding mechanism offers some challenges to non-governmental organizations.  To simplify a complex process, institutions must be accredited to receive funds from the GCF.  Non-accredited institutions can apply for funds, but need to work with accredited institutions.  Things get more complicated, however, because the GCF works through Nationally Designated Authorities (NDAs), which it calls the “interface” between the country and the Fund.  The NDAs are meant to align the distributed resources of the GCF with national objectives and priorities.  Even more, applications of accreditation to the GCF need to have evidence of nomination from the NDA for the country in which the project is to take place.  And, projects submitted for funding to the GCF need a “letter of no objection” from the country’s NDA for the country in which the project is to take place.  But, NDAs are political institutions that don’t necessarily have the same priorities around gender as the GCF.  These difficulties can easily pose an unwelcome barrier between the GCF’s funds and their ultimate intended recipients, vulnerable communities that need help.

 

Moreover, the GCF process poses significant capacity challenges for small grassroots organizations.  Panelists from these groups cited the large amount of time and resources needed to prepare documentation for and file applications, which must be completely in English, a significant barrier in many developing countries. These ‘costs to entry’ make the fund less friendly to small scale grassroots projects, which often are led by women. They suggested additional advising and support from the GCF could support small-scale projects.

 

The GCF appears dedicated to integrating gender as an integral dimension of its operations, but as always, the devil will be in the implementation.

-Anita Desai, Stephen O’Hanlon, Ayse Kaya

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

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.