Governments are gathering virtually under the auspices of the Paris Agreement in what is a high-stakes year for global climate negotiations. The UN Climate Change Conference, Sessions of the subsidiary bodies (SB52), is a three-week meeting that began on Monday, May 31st, and is the first formal UN climate negotiations in a year and a half.
The world has changed radically since governments last gathered for climate talks in Madrid, Spain, in December 2019. In Madrid, the State Parties failed to deliver on the two main tasks before them: setting a solid basis for increased national climate ambition in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports delivered that year, and agreeing on guidelines to govern carbon trading under the Paris Agreement. Since that meeting, the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed climate talks, while the impacts of mounting climate chaos continue to manifest around the world. In the meantime, a majority of countries have submitted their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Still, collectively, those pledges remain woefully inadequate to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C and transition our economies away from fossil fuels.
SB52 presents a key moment to assess the landscape of climate action ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, later this year. It is also the first time that UN climate negotiations are taking place in a virtual setting. This short briefing note identifies some of the key issues CIEL is watching as the current negotiations proceed and as Parties prepare for Glasgow.
Lack of Ambition and Supply Side Promises in the Face of Net Zero
Among the most important issues that do not appear on the formal agenda during SB52 are the emissions and production gaps which amount to a massive ambition gap in climate action. The enormous discrepancy between national emissions reduction pledges and the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement casts doubt on how committed the countries most responsible for the climate crisis are to the fight against it. Plans to continue producing more oil, gas, and coal, rather than phasing out fossil fuels, undermine the prospects for implementing Paris and averting climate catastrophe.
The failure of States’ plans to ensure the urgent and dramatic emissions cuts necessary to avert dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system — the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC — threatens the rights of present and future generations to live in a safe climate. As the climate crisis continues to wreak havoc around the world, the science is clear: we must take ambitious action now, including ending reliance on and the extraction of fossil fuels, to keep temperature rise below 1.5°C.
As countries work on revising and submitting new NDCs, now is the time to demonstrate increased ambition. NDC revisions need to contain a) concrete and detailed plans for emissions reductions during this decade and b) immediate steps to curb the primary drivers of the climate crisis: fossil fuels and deforestation. States cannot rely on promises to reach net-zero by mid-century or plans to deploy unproven and risky “negative emissions” technologies that allow for continued fossil fuel production and use.
Recent developments across the globe offer encouraging signs that the world is moving beyond oil and gas, as well as coal. Court rulings are recognizing the need for fossil fuel companies to align their operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement. In addition, the International Energy Agency’s latest report indicates that new oil and gas investments are incompatible with meeting global climate goals. At the same time, a growing number of governments are making decisions to end public financing for fossil fuels. The need to end the world’s dependence on oil, gas, and coal and achieve zero fossil fuel emissions, not just “net-zero,” must now be reflected comprehensively in all climate policies. And leading economies must pave the way.
Moving Article 6 Negotiations Forward
During COP25, Parties were unable to agree on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs international cooperation towards reducing emissions, including through carbon trading and non-market approaches. While concluding negotiations is critical, getting the rules right is more important than getting the rules done. Without adequate protections, Article 6 mechanisms risk undermining human rights and the integrity of the Paris Agreement.
Article 6 rules must:
- Ensure that any cooperative approaches countries pursue do not undermine their domestic ambition. The world cannot afford for countries to merely trade offsets with one another, effectively playing a game of climate hot potato, while the world continues to warm and people and the planet suffer.
- Guarantee that there is no double-counting of emissions reductions. Article 6 activities must contribute to increased ambition in emissions reductions globally while generating revenues for adaptation finance.
- Not repeat the mistakes of the past, when projects undertaken to generate tradable emissions reduction credits harmed directly affected communities and ecosystems.
- Respect and protect human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples by including rights-based social and environmental safeguards, ensuring meaningful consultation with and participation of local communities, and an independent grievance redress mechanism to provide access to remedy if harms do occur. Anything less is unacceptable.
Loss and Damage is Missing from the Agenda
Tragically, the urgency of tackling the loss and damage that results from mounting climate impacts is becoming more pressing with each round of climate negotiations. Yet, the subject of loss and damage is strikingly absent from the meeting’s formal agenda, hindering the most climate-vulnerable States’ ability to have their legitimate demands for support heard at the United Nations.
Climate vulnerable communities have already suffered and will continue to suffer harms from both decades of major polluters’ inaction and the continued ambition gap in climate policies. And all States have the duty to cooperate in good faith towards addressing past and ongoing loss and damage due to the climate crisis.
The operationalization of the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage, a network designed “to catalyze the technical assistance of relevant organizations, bodies, networks and experts,” constitutes a step in the right direction to further technical cooperation. Technical assistance alone is not enough — communities on the frontlines of climate impacts need urgent assistance, including significant financial support and effective policy tools designed to help them respond to the pressing crisis.
Equity and Access to Future Negotiations
After COVID-19 halted climate negotiations during 2020, organizers decided to shift SB52 to a virtual setting, thus allowing the UNFCCC process to move forward and for Parties to make progress on critical dimensions of global climate action. However, a virtual setting combined with the continued disturbances and losses triggered by COVID-19 raises important questions about both inter-State equity during negotiations and the effective participation of civil society.
Active participation by Indigenous Peoples’ representatives and members of civil society is essential to the legitimacy and integrity of the global climate governance process. Unfortunately, the virtual format severely impairs the ability of these non-governmental delegates to have their voices heard. For most sessions, non-governmental delegates are only “viewers” with no speaking access or ability to see the “chat.” The virtual setting also eliminates any opportunity to interact with negotiators informally, outside of the official agenda.
Organizers must mitigate these challenges by providing greater opportunities for representatives from civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ constituencies to offer input during policy discussions. States must also uphold the rights of access to information and public participation in all relevant items on the SB52 agenda to foster environmental democracy in implementing the Paris Agreement. The new work program expected at the end of the year on Action for Climate Empowerment must promote greater inclusiveness and transparency across all aspects of the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
The ongoing work of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples platform and its inclusive and participatory modalities represents an inspiring good practice regarding the need for transparent, inclusive, and human rights-based climate action. The Platform and the Indigenous Peoples Caucus made several key recommendations that should be reflected across all areas of the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Going forward, the UN Secretariat and the presiding officers must spare no effort to ensure that all sovereign States can be heard in the process and that technical barriers to participation are lifted. And as negotiations progress towards COP26 in Glasgow, States must urgently end vaccine nationalism and work to promote global access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Conclusion
Global action to address the climate crisis is more urgent than ever — and it must be accompanied by steps to address global inequalities. A “business-as-usual” approach to climate negotiations is insufficient to address the scale and urgency of the compounded crises facing the world. The talks taking place throughout SB52 must serve as a wake-up call: governments need to take immediate action to close the tremendous mitigation, adaptation, and finance gaps, and they must do so in a way that lowers barriers created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and permits active participation of both Indigenous Peoples and civil society.
By Sébastien Duyck and Erika Lennon, Senior Attorneys, Climate & Energy
Originally posted on June 7, 2021