7/30/2019 ECO #1 – ADP-2 - 29th April, 2013

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2299 A Appr r iill

Mother

Issue

ECO has been published by Non-Governmental Environmental Groups at major international conferences since the Stockholm Environment

Conference in 1972. ECO is produced co-operatively by the Climate Action Network at the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, April-May 2013.

ECO email: administration@climatenetwork.org - ECO website: http://eco.climatenetwork.org - Editorial/Production: Kyle Gracey

Putting the “2 (degrees)” Back in Workstream 2t is well-trodden ground that there ishuge gap between what Parties

ay they want (staying below 2°Cnd keeping the door open to 1.5°C)nd what Parties have pledged toontribute between now and 2020 tochieve that planetary necessity. Ineory, Workstream 2 has alreadyentified how to bridge the gaprough: 1) improving developed

ountries’ woefully inadequate 2020mission reduction targets; 2) identi-

ng ways to enable and support de-

eloping countries in upping their wn pre-2020 ambition; and 3) jointomplementary action in addition toe first two areas on everything from

hasing out HFCs to fossil fuel sub-dies. The task now is to JUST DO.

ECO thought “doing it” would re-

quire no explanation, but some re-cent happenings in many developedcountries are getting their positionsall wrong. First and foremost – andwe really thought this was obvious –the thing that needs to go up is thetarget, not the temperature. For theEU this means moving to 30% - amove which really shouldn’t be thatdifficult considering that it hasalready achieved its 20% target al-most 8 years ahead of schedule andwill actually achieve more than that

(around 25-27%) by 2020. How canthe EU host 2 COPs over the next 3years and ask the rest of the world todo more while it decides to take abreak? In addition, the EU’s incom-petence at repairing its own emis-sions trading scheme is prettymournful. A modest measure to tem-porarily limit the surplus of allow-

ances in the EU carbon market wasrecently rejected by some within theEuropean Parliament.

The rest of the developed world isno better, and many are far, far worse. There are rumours that Ja-pan is planning to lower its ambitionfrom its current 2020 pledge. Aus-tralia is not likely to do anythingabout its tiny 5% pledge and, de-pending of the outcome of the up-coming national elections, thingscould hit rock bottom, even thoughthe Australian public is strongly in fa-vour of climate action. The USpledge could be labelled ambitious, if the ambition was to overshoot 4°C,while the country is barely on thepath to achieve its very weak 2020

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Plato observed in The Republic thatecessity is the mother of invention.arties, he was speaking about you.umanity formed the State to enablee conditions for sufficient food,

helter and security. Today we facen unprecedented challenge – howll we respond?

At this early stage in developing theobal climate agreement in 2015,mbition” dominates the agenda –

nd for good reason. The IPCC’srthcoming AR5 will shine a bright

nd unyielding light on the planetarymergency we now face.

t’s not just about the need to closee emissions gap. While those 11gatonnes will help the atmosphere,

they won’t break the back of the polit-ics to get us below 2°C. What is re-quired is for collective agreement todramatically change the course of human development with the climateclock ticking. So it’s simple: the 2015deal must deliver ambition compat-ible with a below 2°C trajectory.

There is a sense in some quartersthat a top-down method to achievethat kind of ambition is out of reachpolitically, so a bottom-up approachwill have to suffice. But these under-achievers are missing the point.Either they wilfully ignore the fact thatclimate change will ravage the globeand its inhabitants, or they think PlanB[ottom-up] can keep us out of

harm's reach of unavoidable climatechange. But Plan B isn’t working.

After all, despite floods, droughts,fires and the vanishing Arctic sea ice,developed country commitmentshave hardly changed since Copenha-gen and the Green Climate Fund stillhas no money.

For those of us, like ECO, who de-fend the legally binding regime, weget pinned as idealists. But ECObegs to differ. You are the idealists.We are the realists. Weknow what is needed toavoid dangerous cli-mate change and to

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Mothers of Ambition

7/30/2019 ECO #1 – ADP-2 - 29th April, 2013

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keep us on a below 2°C trajectory.

Of course, these bottom-up actionsre helping, but it’s not enough.oreover, those proactively promot-g Plan B[ottom-up] are neglectinge investors and businesses that re-

uire a strong signal from govern-

ents to shift their assets. And ECOnows that a strong signal doesn’tean a “yeah, I can do that, for

ure”. Nope, it needs a legally bind-g, long-term commitment for gov-nments to decarbonise their

conomies.

So ECO wants to see everyone be-ave in our new (albeit temporary)ccommodation here in Bonn. And inarticular on equity. ECO would like

see here in Bonn the development

f a strong equity framework thatrovides both context and metrics toeasure progress. We are seeing

otable progress in refining thatamework, anchored firmly in theonvention and the foundational, butynamic, concepts of common butfferentiated responsibilities and re-

pective capabilities, and equitableccess to sustainable development.ut progress is not yet completed,nd Parties must stay focused onchieving a shared understanding on

quity.

While necessity is the mother of in-ention, invention, in this case, re-uires a top-down regime.

Workstream continued

arget. And Canada – well, their onlymbition is to withdraw from as manyternational treaties as possible (if

ou hadn’t heard, they’ve also with-awn from the UN Convention toombat Desertification).

This drooping ambition level needsstop. By 2014 ALL Parties (Kyotoarties and free-riders alike) willave to increase the ambition of their 020 pledges. Without this, you won’tet a global agreement in 2015, and

worse – you will not prevent dan-erous climate change from destroy-g entire civilisations andreatening the future of your chil-en.

There is also a role for developingountries in increasing near-term am-tion. It is worth assessing what ad-

ditional ambition more advanceddeveloping countries can muster aswell as what precise support will en-able all to do even more. Jointly, de-veloping and developed countriesshould use Workstream 2 to createan upward spiral of increasing sup-port (finance, technology and capa-city building) and ambition triggered

and enabled by such support. Thiscould also help avoid that, due to, for example low levels of climate fin-ance, developing countries may findthemselves in situations where theylock-in low ambition because of inad-equately supported actions.

Finally, there are the complement-ary actions. The COP in Warsawwould ideally invite other bodies(Montreal Protocol, ICAO and IMO,G20 and so forth) to foster actions in

their spheres of expertise and influ-

ence to result in additional emissionreductions. Those actions wouldneed to come in addition to whatParties have committed to do basedon their 2020 targets, pledges andNAMAs, rather than as means toachieve them. This is why ECO andsome Parties have used the expres-sion “complementary”, a word whose

proximity to the somewhat less ambi-tious “complimentary” should not cre-ate the false impression that avoidingcatastrophic climate change is an is-sue of voluntary action – it is not. It isan obligation Parties have towardsthe millions of people suffering cli-mate change already today, and to-wards the hundreds of millions if notbillions who will be suffering tomor-row, whose lives and livelihoods arethreatened by inaction, complacency

and pretension currently at display atthese negotiations.

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