In a new study quantifying how gender shapes people’s experiences of climate change, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found that, by 2050, higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could mean women globally spend up to 30% more time collecting water.

PIK guest researcher Robert Carr, the study’s lead author, explained how this results in more physical strain, psychological distress and lost time that could otherwise be spent on education, leisure or employment.

“Even when people talk about gendered climate impacts, there is very little attention on time poverty and how that affects someone’s ability to improve their life,” Carr told Climate Home.

In addition, the cost of lost working time for women affects economies, and is projected to reach tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country annually by 2050, the study said.

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Carr noted that the data underpinning PIK’s study only recently became available and is a valuable tool for connecting women’s welfare issues to climate impacts, with more such analysis expected as new datasets emerge.

“But more still needs to be done to act on, and implement, research findings like ours at the local and national levels,” he added.

For that to happen, research like PIK’s has to resonate in government offices and negotiating rooms at UN climate talks, where gender activists see 2024 as a milestone year. Countries are expected to renew key global initiatives for advancing gender-responsive climate action and improving gender balance in official delegations at UN negotiations.

Gendered impacts of climate change

So far progress has been slow. After more than a decade of working towards those aims within the UN climate process, wilder weather and rising seas are still disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people, as global warming continues apace.

For example, female-headed rural households experience higher income losses due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts, through impacts on farming and other activities.

Rates of child marriage and violence against women and girls have been shown to increase during and after climate disasters. And studies have identified a positive correlation between drought-induced displacement and hysterectomies among female farm labourers in India.

At the same time, barriers like caring responsibilities, lack of funding, difficulties in obtaining visas and even sexual harassment in UN spaces persist, standing in the way of women’s equal participation in the climate negotiating rooms.

Yet, despite the mounting urgency, governments made little progress in talks on gender issues at the mid-year UN conference in Bonn this month.

Delegates arrive for a workshop on implementing the UNFCCC gender action plan and on future work to be undertaken on gender and climate change, at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 3, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

Advocates had hoped to leave the German city with a new, stronger version of the UN’s flagship gender initiative, known as the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWP). Instead, discussions were tense and slow, leaving the LWP – which is supposed to be renewed by 2025 – to be finalised in November at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

No rise in women negotiators

Claudia Rubio, gender working group lead for the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN, said the LWP has enabled a better understanding of “what is prohibiting women and other genders from being in [UN negotiating] spaces”.

But Mwanahamisi Singano, senior global policy lead at the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), reminded delegates at a workshop in Bonn that “time has not been the magic ingredient in bridging disparities between women and men in participation”, which has “stagnated or even declined when it comes to COPs”.

According to data from WEDO, women made up only 34% of COP28 government delegations overall, the same percentage as 10 years ago. Azerbaijan’s initial men-only COP29 organising committee – to which women were hastily added after an international outcry – and its line-up of negotiators at Bonn were a case in point.

The UN’s own analysis of men and women’s relative speaking times at the negotiations shows that women often – though not always – speak less, and that themes such as technology and finance see consistently lower numbers for women’s participation.

Progress has been gradual even with programmes like WEDO’s Women Delegates Fund, which has financed hundreds of women – primarily from least developed countries and small island developing states – to attend UN climate talks. Since 2012, WEDO has also run ‘Night Schools’, training women in technical language and negotiation skills.

Gender in the NDCs

Increasing the gender diversity of decision-makers in UN negotiations is important in its own right, but it does not necessarily translate into more gender-responsive climate policy, experts said. Not all women negotiators are knowledgeable about the gender-climate nexus, they noted.

But having an international framework to boost gender-sensitive climate action has also “catalysed political will” at the country level, according to Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer at Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF).

Delegates listen to discussions on the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 4, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

This is evidenced by an increase in the number of official National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points – up from 38 in 2017 when UN climate talks first adopted a Gender Action Plan, to 140 across 110 countries today. While the precise role of these focal points depends on country needs, advocates say they have been pivotal in spurring action on national gender priorities.

So far, at least 23 countries have national gender and climate change action plans, and references to gender in national climate plans submitted to the UN, known as NDCs, have increased since the earliest commitments in 2016. Around four-fifths now include gender-related information, according to a UN review of the plans.

In practice, this ranges from including gender-diverse people in the development of national climate plans to legislation that specifically addresses the intersection of climate change and gender.

For example, nine countries – including Sierra Leone and Jordan – have committed to addressing rising gender-based violence in the context of climate change. South Sudan acknowledged that heat exposure and malnutrition can increase infant and maternal mortality, while Côte d’Ivoire recognised that climate change hikes risks to pregnant women and those going through menopause.

Nonetheless, only a third of countries include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services in their climate commitments, according to a 2023 report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London, showing how much work is yet to be done.

Next year, countries are due to submit updated NDCs, which campaigners see as a crucial opportunity to embed gender equality more deeply, including by involving women and girls in their planning and implementation, and collecting data disaggregated by sex and gender that can help shape policy.

Cross-cutting issue

Ahead of COP29, gender advocates are pushing for a stronger work programme with new language around intersectionality – the recognition that gender interacts with other parts of identity like race, class and Indigeneity to create overlapping systems of discrimination.

Angela Baschieri, technical lead on climate action at UNFPA, said gender commitments in the UN climate process must be more ambitious and include actionable targets for countries to address gender inequality.

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Beyond the gender negotiations themselves, the Women and Gender Constituency wants to boost the integration of gender with other streams of work.

“Whether you’re talking about green hydrogen, climate finance or low-carbon transport, there is always a gender dimension,” said Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF International, a network of feminist groups campaigning on environmental issues.

“We have so much evidence now that climate policies just aren’t as efficient if they are not gender-transformative,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

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This week, the UN climate change body (UNFCCC) confirmed that this year’s Regional Climate Weeks will be cancelled until further notice due to lack of funding.

The update comes shortly after UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell made an urgent plea at the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial last week to plug the body’s funding gap, stating that it is facing “severe financial challenges” – putting a rising workload at risk due to “governments’ failure to provide enough money”.

The suspension of the Regional Climate Weeks is hugely disappointing news.

It means that a vital platform to express the concerns of people and communities most affected by climate change has been taken away.

UN’s climate body faces “severe financial challenges” which put work at risk

The climate weeks are a vital opportunity to bring a stronger regional voice – those who are footing the bill in developing countries for a crisis they have done the least to cause – to the international table in the lead-up to the UN COP climate summits.

Last year we saw four regional climate weeks: Africa Climate Week in Nairobi, Kenya; Middle East and North Africa Climate Week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week in Panama City, Panama; and Asia-Pacific Climate Week in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

These attracted 26,000 participants in 900 sessions and brought together policymakers, scientists and other experts from the multiple regions, with fundamental contributions feeding into the COP28 agenda. 

At Africa Climate Summit alone, over 20 commitments were made by African heads of state – commitments and announcements that equated to a combined investment of nearly $26 billion from public, private sector and multilateral development banks, philanthropic foundations and other financing partners.

This is the right way forward because, while extreme weather events affect all of us, we know their impacts are not felt equally.

Shrinking water access

Extremes of both drought and floods are threatening people’s access to the three essentials they need to survive – clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene – as boreholes run dry, floods wash away latrines, and supplies are contaminated by silt and debris.

Around the world, ordinary people – farmers, community leaders, family members – are doing everything they can to adapt to the realities of life on the frontlines of climate change.

They’re working together to monitor water reserves, conserving supplies to make every drop last. They’re sowing crops that can withstand droughts, and planting trees to protect them from floods. And they’re building with future threats in mind, raising homes and toilets off the ground and making them safe from floodwaters.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Each Regional Climate Week provides a vital platform for those shouldering the heaviest burden of the climate crisis – such as women and girls, people experiencing marginalisation, and Indigenous communities – to share their experiences, expertise, and unique perspectives.  

The climate crisis is a water crisis, and the people on the frontlines of this crisis are vital to solving it. 

With leadership and participation from those vulnerable communities and groups, we are all better equipped to adapt to our changing climate – and to ensure that everyone, everywhere has climate-resilient water, sanitation and hygiene.

Each and every UN climate conference matters. We urgently need global governments to fuel their words with action, open their wallets and prioritise the voices, experiences and solutions of those most affected by the climate crisis. If not, we’ll continue to see climate change wash away people’s futures.

Dulce Marrumbe is head of partnerships and advocacy at WaterAid’s regional office for Southern Africa.

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The UNFCCC executive director Simon Stiell made an urgent plea for more funding to over 40 ministers and negotiators gathered on Thursday in Helsingør, Denmark, for the first major climate summit of the year. 

“Our organization, the UNFCCC, now faces severe financial challenges,” he said. “We are attempting to meet an ever-growing mandate. Our job is to make your job easier. To carry out the tasks you have all agreed we should do, but we can only do this if we have the funding support.”

Stiell highlighted that the organisation’s budget “is currently less than half funded”. 

Budget headache

The UNFCCC estimated it needed around €152m ($165m) in the 2024-2025 period to carry out an ever-growing number of  activities that countries ask the climate body to be in charge of.

But, in Bonn last June, countries agreed only to a core budget of €74m ($80.4m) with compulsory contributions provided by governments based on their wealth. This was a 19% increase on the previous two years’ budget, ignoring inflation.

That left the climate body with a hole of €78m ($85m) that would need to be filled with voluntary donations from governments and private entities.

This money is needed to arrange dozens of meetings across the world on key negotiating strands like the new climate finance goal – to be agreed at COP29 – the global goal on adaptation and a new carbon market under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Voluntary donations missing

But, so far this year, the UNFCCC has managed to raise less than $9m in voluntary donations. The United Kingdom has given the largest sum – $2.1m – followed by the Open Society Foundations ($1.5m), the Rockefeller Foundation ($1.3m) and Germany ($0.9m).

The climate body is also scrambling to collect millions of dollars in compulsory contributions that countries failed to fork out in previous years.

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The funding shortfall is fuelling a sense of angst among UNFCCC staff, who are forced to constantly find new ways to shuffle money around in emergency mode without any long-term certainty, according to a source with knowledge of the UNFCCC’s operations.

The UNFCCC has repeatedly warned governments of the risk of leaving them at the mercy of voluntary donations.

During discussions over the size of its budget last year, it wrote that “prohibitive dependence on supplementary funding” would result in “jeopardizing the sustainability of the UNFCCC secretariat and limiting support to critical recurring and long-term activities”.

Urgent pleas

At Cop28, soon after the gavel came down in Dubai, Simon Stiell urged governments to stump up more cash for unfunded operations.

But his plea went unheeded, prompting Stiell to issue a new request for funding in a letter to all countries last week. He then used his speech at the Danish climate summit to bring his argument out in the open.

“This is me once again ringing that alarm bell,” he said. “I urge you to respond as soon as possible, to ensure you get the support you need and have requested from us.”

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At climate talks in the German city of Bonn last week, governments negotiated how much money to give the UNFCCC for the next two years.

The UNFCCC wanted €83m ($91m) but governments could only agree to give it €74m ($81m), leaving its work at the mercy of what governments want to fund voluntarily.

Three sources in the room during negotiations told Climate Home that the European Union, one of the UNFCCC's major funders, would not allow any increase above this figure.

Ignoring inflation, its a 19% increase on the previous two years' budget. A spokesperson for the EU confirmed that the block "together with other Parties" supported a 19% increase.

One small island negotiator told Climate Home: "The big issue with the budget is that we agree as [governments] to mandates at Cops. We all make compromises and then 6-18 months later, in a sparsely-attended budget room, we decide on how much of those mandates get funded".

"It's inefficient and fundamentally unfair," the negotiator added, "all the power in the budget room is with the countries that contribute a lot".

Status quo

The budget increase is 19%, most of the extra money will be eaten up by inflation and by increases in staff salaries ordered by the UN's headquarters in New York.

The small island negotiator said it was "just maintaining the status quo" with "no new staff, no new capacity to fulfill the expanded mandates the [governments] have given the secretariat".

In his pitch for funds, Stiell said that, on top of its normal tasks, the UNFCCC has to help governments respond to the global stocktake of climate action, negotiate a new climate finance goal and submit new and improved climate plans in 2025.

The UNFCCC also wants to do more work to hold polluting governments and corporations to account, he said.

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Carrying out all its jobs will cost €131m, he said, so it will have to try and drum up more money, mainly from governments, on a voluntary basis.

Stiell said this funding is "unpredictable" which "jeopardises the delivery of mandated activities".

Relying on voluntary funding gives bigger and wealthier countries more power over what work the UNFCCC is able to carry out.

The UNFCCC does get some donations from private companies although there are restrictions on this.

If they don't receive enough extra funding, then work like organising a ministerial round-table on climate ambition in the 2020s could be jeoparised, as could engagement with companies and training on scrutiny of governments climate plans.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said: "The EU and its member states not only contribute a significant share to the core budget, but also make a contribution to the supplementary trust fund and to the fund that supports developing country travel."

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In a briefing note, unnamed authors from the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC) said these removal activities are “technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks”. It concludes they are therefore not suitable for offsetting carbon emissions under the upcoming UN’s global scheme.

The UN assessment has angered the growing industry, which is seeing billions of dollars of investment from governments and corporations.

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More than 100 figures from the carbon removal industry signed a letter addressed to the UN body asking it not to rule out any specific activity, but to “let science, innovation, and the market compete to deliver the solutions”.

Crunch meeting

The document will inform discussions taking place next week in the German city of Bonn to set up a new global carbon trading system under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

A UN panel is tasked with drafting the rules and indicating which activities should be eligible. It is taking into consideration both land-based solutions, like tree planting, and technological ones, such as using machines to pull CO2 directly out of the air.

The process is being closely watched as the inclusion of certain technologies over others could have far-reaching consequences for the development of the sector.

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Campaigners have raised concerns over the technical challenges of deploying these solutions and the potential risks to human rights.

But Ben Rubin, from the Carbon Business Council, told Climate Home News that leaving any carbon removal pathway off the table risks creating challenges to have the scale of climate impact that is needed.

Carbon removals role

As the world fails to curb the rise of polluting emissions, most scientists see some form of carbon removal as necessary to limit the impact of climate change.

The IPCC said the use of carbon removal is “unavoidable” to offset hard-to-abate emissions and achieve net zero. But how to achieve that result is the subject of intense debate.

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At the moment land-based solutions, such as planting trees or preventing them from being cut down, account for 99.9% of all CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

But several governments, like the US, and companies are betting big on technological fixes.

The most prominent ones are Direct Air Capture (DAC) and Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The first technology uses big machines to pull carbon dioxide directly out of the air and store it underground.

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The second one relies on trapping emissions produced through the generation of biomass energy. Its proponents describe it as carbon-negative because it permanently locks away the CO2 trees used as biomass will have absorbed in their lifetime.

Multi-billion dollar bet

The industry believes it can scale up rapidly thanks to large-scale investment pouring into the sector.

The US government committed $3.7 billion towards the development of DAC. Major corporations are signing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to buy vast amounts of tech-based carbon removals as a way to offset their own emissions.

The industry also hopes to be supported by the creation of a new global carbon market. As part of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the new system will allow governments, companies and individuals to buy UN-certified credits, funneling money towards climate projects.

A supervisory committee is currently working out the complex details of how this mechanism will work, including the eligibility of certain projects.

In its briefing note, the UNFCCC said activities like DAC or BECCS are not fit for the purposes of Article 6.

Currently costly

Without going into details, it argues they are too costly, are not suitable for developing countries, and do not contribute to sustainable development.

The UN based its views on scientific papers and on submissions received by industry players and campaigners.

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The International Energy Agency estimates that removing a ton of carbon dioxide costs between $135 and $135 with DAC today – although this could drop to below $100 by 2030.

According to the IPCC scientists, this is far more expensive than reducing emissions with renewable energy or energy efficiency.

Human rights risks

A recent study cited in the brief argues that the large-scale deployment of carbon removal technologies may lead to “significant human rights infringements”.

The risk may be particularly acute with BECCS which, to operate at scale, would require a vast amount of land and water to be converted from food production to growing biomass.

This will “most likely infringe upon the right to food, the right to water, and the right to a healthy environment”, the authors said.

The study found DAC would “likely have a smaller human rights impact” than BECCS. It doesn’t incentivise anything to be grown. But, as it requires a lot of energy, large-scale use of DAC could take electricity away from other uses.

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The UN document does not spell out why these carbon removal technologies do not contribute to sustainable development and the industry disputed this.

“We would be pleased to connect you with carbon removal leaders advancing projects in Kenya, Kiribati, India, Brazil and other locations around the world where CDR is contributing directly to local regional economic development”, their letter said.

The Center for International Environmental Law called carbon removal “a dangerous distraction”. The NGO argued that relying on removal technology, “both delays the immediate reduction of emissions and presents independent risks to human rights and the environment, some of which remain poorly understood”.

The post UN advises against offsets for carbon removal technologies appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN chief Antonio Guterres was responsible for the selection process and the UNFCCC bureau signed off his decision at a specially convened meeting on Thursday 11 August. The UN announced the appointment on Monday 15 August.

Stiell is a veteran advocate for climate ambition from a vulnerable Caribbean island stae. On the global stage, his calls for rapid reductions of emissions have put him at odds with big emerging economies like China, while his lobbying for climate finance has met resistance from rich countries like the US and EU.

This report is terrifying. There is no other way of saying it. Key findings for small islands:
We are already reaching our limits to adaptation at 1.1°C.
We are already experiencing #lossanddamage.
We cannot adapt to a world that warms beyond #1o5C. https://t.co/pjeYGwU7b6

— simonstiell (@simonstiell) February 28, 2022

Stiell studied engineering and business at London Metropolitan and Westminster universities in the UK, staying in the country to work for technology companies in the 90s before returning to Grenada. Back home he founded a property development company, became chair of the tourism board and vice-president of the chamber of industry.

In 2013, he was appointed to Grenada’s Senate and went on to lead ministries for agriculture and education before becoming Grenada’s minister for climate resilience in March 2018. His centre-right New National Party was voted out of government in June.

As environment minister, he dealt with tourist resort development and plastic waste domestically while advocating for small, vulnerable islands on the global stage. He has chaired the “High Ambition Coalition”, an alliance between rich countries like the EU and poorer, vulnerable ones like Grenada, to promote rapid emissions reductions.

Before and during Cop26, president Alok Sharma placed Stiell and Danish environment minister Dan Jørgensen in charge of leading consultations on how countries can reduce their emissions faster this decade to keep 1.5C within reach.

These discussions led to countries agreeing to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans by the end of 2022, although few have followed up on this promise.

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He takes over from Ibrahim Thiaw, a Mauritianian diplomat who leads the UN’s anti-desertification work and has also been doing the UN climate job on an interim basis for four weeks.

Before that, former Mexican foreign minister Patricia Espinosa led the organisation for six tumultous years, guiding it through crises including Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement, the Covid-19 pandemic and her own treatment for breast cancer.

When Espinosa took over, the the global climate rulebook drawn up in Paris in 2015 was unfinished. At Cop26 in Glasgow last year, it was completed with agreements on carbon markets and other contentious issues.

Now, the organisation is pivoting to implementation. One senior source close to the UN told Climate Home in May that the new executive secretary will “need to start building a new architecture of accountability”. Veteran climate adviser Kaveh Guilanpour told Climate Home they need “direct experience of delivery beyond the world of diplomacy”.

After Espinosa and Costa Rica’s Christiana Figueres, Stiell will be the third executive secretary in a row from the Latin America and Caribbean region. The previous executive secretaries were from Europe so it was expected that the job would go to someone from Africa or Asia.

Climate Home News understands that Espinosa’s deputy, India’s Ovais Sarmad, was in the running along with the UK’s Cop26 president Alok Sharma.

Although the advert for the $207,000 job specified that female applicants were “especially welcome”, all three of these candidates are male.

The United Nations aims for gender balance among its senior leadership. Last month, a UN spokesperson said it had “basically fifty-fifty parity” at the top of the organisation.

The job is based at the UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn, Germany. Stiell will lead nearly 400 staff who come from over 100 countries.

This article was updated after publication to reflect the official announcement.

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Thiaw will take over the role when Patricia Espinosa, who has been in the job six years, steps down next month and “until the selection process for the new executive secretary is completed,” a letter to parties, seen by Climate Home News, states.

A UN Climate Change spokesperson previously told Climate Home that Espinosa’s last day was on 15 July. Thiaw will start on 17 July.

Espinosa told staff of the decision on Monday and UN Climate Change sent a note to governments today.

Thiaw has served as the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) since January 2019. In this role, he called for land management to be more closely linked to climate action.

#Climate action is strongly linked to #land management. We can turn a vicious, circular relationship into a virtuous one. Let us foster closer collaboration, break out of our silos and set a new policy and investment paradigm. #ClimateDialogues ⁦@UNFCCC⁩ pic.twitter.com/yp3huto3LM

— Ibrahim Thiaw (@ibrahimthiaw) November 30, 2020

Before that, Thiaw was the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser for the Sahel region of Africa and the assistant secretary general of the UN Environment Programme.

He holds a degree in forestry and spent ten years in the rural development ministry of Mauritania, a large sparsely-populated nation which spans much of the west of the Sahara desert.

While Espinosa was rumoured to step down following her second term as climate chief, the UN was slow to start the recruitment process with the job advert only published on 13 May.

The deadline for applications to be her permanent replacement is on Friday. Current Cop26 president Alok Sharma, from the UK, is reported to be interested in the job.

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But three of the five executive secretaries have been European so developing nations, particularly in Africa and Asia, are likely to argue that the role should go to someone from their regions.

The job advert states that female applicants are “especially welcome” to apply for the $207,000 a year role based in Bonn, Germany.

Climate Home’s sources have suggested several African and Asian women as possible contenders including the environment ministers of Rwanda, Egypt and Nigeria and the finance minister of Indonesia.

Thiaw will combine his role at UNCCD with running UN Climate Change ahead of the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt in November. He said he is “committed to ensuring that there will be no disruption in the dispensing of my function” at UNCCD.

Earlier this year, former Costa Rican environment minister Andrea Meza Murillo was appointed deputy head of UNCCD.

This article was updated to include Ibrahim Thiaw’s comments

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That’s the question being asked at the UN headquarters in New York. Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa is stepping down as head of UN Climate Change in July after a six-year stint.

Discussions for her replacement have been slow to get going. The job ad for her successor was posted on the UN website on Friday, leaving just over a month for governments to put their candidates forward before the 24 June deadline.

Applicants will need to demonstrate senior leadership experience, “strategic vision and an intimate understanding” of climate and development issues. Ministerial experience is a plus. The job is based at the UN Climate Change headquarters in Bonn, Germany, and the salary is $207,000, according to the latest UN pay grid.

With previous executive secretaries from Europe and Latin America, there is a push for African and Asian candidates to be given a chance. Female applicants are “especially welcome,” the advert stipulates.

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UN chief António Guterres has been a vocal promoter of women’s leadership. Capitals will lobby and his deputy Amina Mohammed is understood to have influence over the process. Ultimately, the decision lies with him.

This is a tough job. The successful candidate will need to steer international climate efforts through a critical decade of action for meeting global climate goals.

They will “need to start building a new architecture of accountability,” one senior source close to the UN told Climate Home News.

Managing the transition from focusing on negotiations to implementation will be essential. “That is a huge organisational challenge. Ideally you will need someone with direct experience of delivery beyond the world of diplomacy,” said Kaveh Guilanpour, veteran climate adviser.

In no particular order, here are nine runners and riders.

Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya – Rwanda

Rwanda’s environment minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya (Photo: Rwanda’s ministry of enviornment/Flickr)

Rwanda’s environment minister has a strong diplomatic record and longstanding ministerial experience. Her name comes up a lot in climate circles as a potential successor to Espinosa.

At the Cop26 climate talks, she co-led ministerial discussions to align countries’ climate plans over a common time period. More recently, she jointly and successfully proposed a resolution for a plastic pollution treaty at the UN Environment Assembly.

She studied physical chemistry in Russia and holds a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology-IIT Roorkee. 

Before her appointment at the environment ministry in November 2019, Mujawamariya served as Rwanda’s ambassador to Russia, and the country’s education and subsequently gender minister. 

She is fluent in English, French and Russian.

Yasmine Fouad –  Egypt

Yasmine Fouad, environment minister for Egypt (Pic: IISD/ENB)

Environment minister Yasmine Fouad was assigned “ministerial coordinator and envoy” for Cop27, the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh this November – a role she would have to quit to step into Espinosa’s shoes.

While the government gave her the junior role to foreign minister Sameh Shoukry’s presidency of the Cop, Fouad has ample climate and UN experience.

A climate scientist by background, Fouad was a lead author on a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification in 2017.

She was made deputy environment minister in 2014, when she supported the Egyptian president as coordinator of the committee of African heads of states for climate change (CAHOSCC), before her promotion to minister in 2018.

Fouad has worked with several UN organisations including the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on implementing development and climate projects in Egypt.

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane – South Africa

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African minister of women, youth and persons with disabilities (Photo: GCIS/Government ZA/Flickr)

South Africa’s minister of women, youth and persons with disabilities has been a vocal advocate for gender-responsive climate policy.

She has been a minister for 13 years, serving on the international relations and cooperation portfolio for nine years. During that time, South Africa became a member of the group of emerging economies known as Brics (together with Brazil, Russia, India and China).

In 2011, Nkoana-Mashabane presided over Cop17 in Durban, one of the latest running UN climate summits on record. Countries agreed on a roadmap to a global climate treaty (which became the Paris Agreement) and established the Green Climate Fund.

Some sources that have worked with her describe her as “a superb candidate”.

But campaigners are not impressed by her record. Nkoana-Mashabane’s support for disgraced president Jacob Zuma, who is facing corruption charges, could play against her.

Sharon Ikeazor – Nigeria

Sharon Ikeazor, Nigeria’s minister of environment (Photo: IISD/ENB/Kiara Worth)

As Nigeria’s environment minister, Ikeazor oversaw a pioneering climate bill to set annual carbon budgets towards net zero emissions by 2060.

Sam Onuigbo, a Nigerian lawmaker who sponsored the bill, described her as “a goal getter and a result-oriented leader”.

Her ministerial term comes to an end in 2023 and she may want to line up the next job.

Before her appointment in 2019, Ikeazor was a lawyer with several national and international banks. She worked for Shell in Nigeria in the early 1990s before establishing her own legal practice.

She continued to provide legal advice to the oil and gas sector in Nigeria before entering politics in 2011.

She is a champion for women’s leadership and founded an NGO to give internally displaced women interest-free loans to start small-scale businesses.

Naoko Ishii – Japan

Naoko Ishii, executive director of the Institute for Future Initiative and former CEO of the Global Enviornment Facility (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)

Ishii has extensive experience of working with UN organisations on climate and development finance, making her a strong candidate for Asia.

She was elected CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility in 2012 and led the grant-giving organisation for eight years until September 2020.

Before joining the GEF, she served as Japan’s deputy vice minister of finance and negotiated the design of the Green Climate Fund. She held positions at the World Bank, the IMF and the Harvard Institute for International Development.

She serves as the executive vice president of the Institute for Future Initiative and the director of the Center for Global Commons  at the University of Tokyo.

She is a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an ambassador for the Food and Land Use Coalition.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati – Indonesia 

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia’s finance minister (Photo: Asian Development Bank/Flickr)

An economist by training, Indrawati has served as Indonesia’s finance minister since 2016 – a role she previously occupied 2005-2010.

She resigned as finance minister in 2010 when she was appointed managing director of the World Bank group. She was credited with steering Indonesia’s economy through the 2008 financial crisis by driving investments – although lawmakers raised concerns over “suspicious and possibly fraudulent transactions” during the bailout period.

Indrawati has a solid grasp of the development and finance challenges the developing world is facing.

During the Cop13 climate talks in Bali in 2007, she brought development and finance ministers into the climate tent for the first time. This led to the creation of the “Bali breakfasts”, a series of annual meetings with the World Bank, the IMF and ministers.

She serves as the co-chair of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.

Teresa Ribera – Spain

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)

Ribera is widely seen as having some of the most relevant experience to take on the role as head of UN Climate Change.

Climate adviser Guilanpour told Climate Home the Spanish jurist and deputy prime minister “ticks all the boxes”. 

Under her leadership, the Spanish government stepped in to host the Cop25 climate talks in 2019 with just one month’s notice after Chile withdrew because of social unrest in Santiago. She supported the Chilean presidency in clinching a deal, albeit an underwhelming one, two days into overtime.

As minister for the ecological transition, Ribera reached an agreement with Spanish unions to close coal mines as part of an energy transition investment package. She previously headed Paris-based environmental thinktank Iddri.

Her move to Bonn would be a win for the UN and a loss for Spain. However, developing countries may not want to see a European in the top climate job.

Catherine McKenna – Canada 

Catherine McKenna at a technology conference, 2019 (Pic: Sam Barnes/Collision via Sportsfile)

McKenna, Canada’s former environment and infrastructure and communities minister, left politics last year to spend more time on “[her] kids and the climate”.

In March, she was appointed to chair Guterres’ anti-greenwash squad which is tasked with presenting recommendations by Cop27 for ensuring the environmental integrity of companies, cities and regions’ net zero commitments. But as one source put it, “nothing is permanent”.

McKenna is well known in the international climate community. She signed the Paris Agreement on behalf of Canada and jointly spearheaded the Powering Past Coal Alliance.

But she may be more valuable to Guterres on his net zero expert group.

Selwin Hart – Barbados 

Selwin Hart, special adviser to the UN secretary-general on climate action (Photo: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS/OEA/Flickr)

Hart was appointed UN special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and just transition at the start of 2020.

A former chief climate negotiator for Barbados and a lead negotiator on finance for the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (Aosis), Hart led the UN team that helped deliver the 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York.

He previously served as the executive director for the Caribbean region at the Inter-American Development Bank and as a climate advisor to the Caribbean Development Bank.

Hart has no experience in a ministerial role and sources told Climate Home that will play against him. Plus the last two executive secretary of UN Climate Change have come from the group of Latin America and Caribbean countries. But his proximity to Guterres gives Hart a shot.

The post Who will replace Patricia Espinosa as the UN climate chief? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Over 160 non-governmental organisations and opposition federal deputies and senators said the Brazilian government had “violate[d] delegates’ security and safety within UN premises” and compromised their privacy, freedom of thought and speech and immunity. If tolerated, this could set “a grisly precedent”, they warned.

Last month, the Estadao newspaper revealed that Brazil’s intelligence agency Abin sent four agents to the talks disguised as “analysts”. One analyst told the newspaper they were there to monitor criticism of the Bolsonaro administration’s policy of removing environmental protections from the Amazon rainforest.

Brazilian spies intimidated government’s own delegates at climate talks

Three Brazilian sources who were at the talks told Climate Home that the spies had intimidated Brazil’s own delegates, so that they were too scared to be seen talking to civil society. The letter says these delegates included federal scientists and members of parliament.

The letter also accuses the government of spying on civil society observers and indigenous peoples’ representatives. Sources at the talks told Climate Home that spies had taken notes in civil society meetings, which were open to the public.

After the spying was revealed, Brazilian General Augusto Heleno who oversees Abin, claimed the spy agency had a legal right to monitor COP climate talks. He said Abin’s agents were there to tackle “sordid and lying international campaigns” supported by “bad Brazilians, with the objective of harming Brazil”.

5- Deplorável a visão míope de alguns sobre Inteligência de Estado. Temas estratégicos devem ser acompanhados por servidores qualificados, sobretudo quando envolvem campanhas internacionais sórdidas e mentirosas, apoiadas por maus brasileiros, com objetivo de prejudicar o Brasil;

— General Heleno (@gen_heleno) October 16, 2020

Jair Bolsonaro and his government have repeatedly criticised, harassed and attempted to intimidate environmentalists and indigenous people. Before his election in 2018, Bolsonaro said he would “put an end to all activism in Brazil”.

Just before the Madrid talks in 2019, Brazilian police raided an NGO in the Amazon and arrested four volunteer firefighters, accusing them of starting fires – a charge there was no evidence for.

In September 2020, Heleno accused indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara of committing a “crime against our country” by accusing Bolsonaro of “environmental crimes” and encouraging a “worldwide boycott against Brazilian products”. Guajajara has urged the EU to boycott products like soya, beef and palm oil from areas where those products are driving deforestation.

Recently, Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles has taken Climate Observatory director Marco Astrini to court in an attempt to force him to retract criticism of Salles. Astrini said Salles was proposing a “task force for environmental destruction” after Salles suggested the government should deregulate the Amazon while the media is distracted by the coronavirus crisis.

The Brazilian government has repeatedly tried to divert the blame for record-breaking fires in the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands away from its own policies and on to indigenous people and environmentalists. President Jair Bolsonaro has claimed that international criticism of its policies is driven by “shady interests” jealous of Brazil’s food exports.

Bolsonaro has downgraded the role of his Environment Ministry and sacked a space agency chief for providing data which showed that deforestation was increasing. He has been accused of sabotaging a fund designed to allow local authorities and companies to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The UK and US have previously sent spies to UN climate talks, to gather intelligence on other delegations. In 2014, the UN secretary general at the time Ban Ki-Moon said any breach of confidentiality should be investigated, adding: “All diplomatic information is inviolable”. However if such an investigation took place, the outcome was not publicised.

At the time of publication, UN Climate Change had not responded to a request for comment.

The post Environmentalists urge UN to condemn Brazil’s spying at climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

Cop26 in Glasgow, UK, was postponed by a whole year to November 2021 because of the risk of a Covid-19 outbreak. A preparatory meeting in Bonn, Germany was also deferred.

Members of the UN Climate Change bureau – a group of top diplomats which includes UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa – met on Tuesday to decide the path forward for international climate negotiations.

One option under consideration is to hold a third climate meeting in 2021. This would allow negotiators to catch up on work missed this year and arrive in Glasgow ready to negotiate the last unresolved issues of the Paris Agreement rulebook.

Alongside the technical negotiations, leaders are expected to arrive at Cop26 with strengthened national climate plans. Few major emitters are ready to deliver, with preparations running late even before the pandemic hit.

Federica Fricano, Italy’s director of international climate negotiations and a bureau member, said the proposed timeline aims to “maximise progress” and deliver greater action at Cop26.

However, it is not clear who would pay for the event at a time UN Climate Change warned it faced “decreasing financial resources”.

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UN Climate Change is predominantly funded by contributions from members to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its role is to facilitate climate negotiations, and provide technical support and capacity-building to help countries cut emissions and cope with climate impacts.

But as governments around the world focus on restarting their economies, some have not paid their dues. In response to countries’ questions about its finances, the UN Climate Change secretariat said contributions received by the end of March were “at a record low compared with those in previous years” with a hole of €33 million (£39.5m).

“Some parties have informed the secretariat that delays in their core contributions have been due to Covid-19, which has caused budgetary uncertainty for many parties as well as delays in payment,” it said.

Of the 43 countries with the biggest outstanding contributions, the secretariat said it had reached out to 34 that were not too heavily affected by Covid-19, urging them to pay up.

As of July this year, UN Climate Change had received only 48% of its core contribution for 2020.

In its 2019 annual report published last week, it warned “the pandemic risks diverting attention and funds from the climate crisis at a time when they are sorely needed, including for the secretariat.”

As the scope of its work expands, “more resources will be necessary to allow the secretariat to support Parties in achieve their climate change commitment,” the report added.

Big oil need not apply: UK raises the bar for UN climate summit sponsorship

However, the pandemic is also expected to generate some operational savings. With in-person meetings, workshops and training sessions postponed or taking place online, the secretariat estimates its travel budget will reduce by up to a quarter this year. In 2019, UN Climate Change spent $12 million or 13% of its total expenditure on travel.

Ovais Sarmad, deputy executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the pandemic had changed the way the organisation operates, adding: “never have global cooperation and multilateralism been more important”.

Sonam Wangdi, of Bhutan, chair of a group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs), warned voices of vulnerable nations facing the double threat of intensifying climate impacts and Covid-19 should not be excluded from the events running up to Cop26. That means making efforts “to accommodate internet connection issues, varying time zones and any other issues that remote work presents,” he said.

At least 19 poor nations were aiming to present more ambitious climate plans to the UN in 2020, the official deadline, Wangdi said, with all 47 LDCs committed to strengthening their plans.

Carlos Fuller, of Belize, lead negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States, told Climate Home News that a number of island states will submit their plans in early 2021 because of delays caused by the pandemic.

So far only 11 nations representing 2.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions have presented updated plans to the UN. For UN Climate Change, this does not reflect the urgency for greater action requested by the science, vulnerable nations and people’s demands.

“Most countries are neither responding to the call for ambitious action nor preparing at the pace science indicates is required,” it said in its annual report, adding “efforts are being constrained by lack of resources.”

The post Extra UN climate talks mooted for 2021 to help negotiators catch up appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN talks, known as Cop26, had been due to take place in Glasgow from 9-20 November with the goal of spurring deep cuts in greenhouse gases in the coming decade to rein in rising temperatures.

Up to 30,000 delegates were expected from around the world in the biggest diplomatic event the UK has ever hosted.

“The world is currently facing an unprecedented global challenge and countries are rightly focusing their efforts on saving lives and fighting Covid-19,” Alok Sharma, UK president-designate of Cop26, said in a statement. “That is why we have decided to reschedule Cop26.”

“Covid-19 is the most urgent threat facing humanity today, but we cannot forget that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity over the long term,” said Patricia Espinosa, head of UN Climate Change.

A UN statement seen by Climate Home News said the summit would be postponed into next year, but did not set a new date. A preparatory session of talks due at UN Climate Change’s headquarters in Bonn, Germany, in June were also put off until preliminary dates of 4-13 October, with a review in August.

The session of mid-year talks is due to lay some of the ground work ahead of the Cop, giving negotiators time to advance on technical issues. A number of topics including the reporting of countries’ climate plans and efforts to create a new global carbon market were left unresolved at the last round of talks.

The decision to postpone the talks was taken by the UN Climate Change bureau – which is comprised of top climate diplomats from various countries, including Cop25 president and Chilean environment minister Carolina Schmidt and UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa.

Zoom climate diplomacy: ‘Technology doesn’t help build trust’

UN Climate Change and the UK government “agreed to work closely with the COP Bureau members over the next few weeks to identify a suitable date for Cop26,” the statement added.

As of 1 April, coronavirus had killed more than 37,200 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation. The Cop26 venue, the Scottish Event Campus, is being turned into a temporary hospital with an initial 300 beds to increase patient capacity in Scotland during the Covid-19 crisis.

The postponement will give some clarity to governments and diplomats who have been waiting to know the impact of the pandemic on this year’s climate timetable.

It also means governments around the world will have more time to assess the likely stark impact of the US presidential election, on 3 November, on global efforts to avert more heatwaves, wildfires and rising sea levels.

The US will formally leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November, under a decision by President Donald Trump. Democratic candidates to take on Trump – Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders – have pledged to immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement if they win.

That means a Democratic victory would make the US a leading voice for climate action at the postponed Cop26, and a mere observer if Trump wins a second term.

Coronavirus pandemic threatens climate monitoring, WMO warns

“Soon, economies will restart. This is a chance for nations to recover better, to include the most vulnerable in those plans, and a chance to shape the 21st century economy in ways that are clean, green, healthy, just, safe and more resilient,” Espinosa said.

“Postponing Cop26 … is the right thing to do – public health and safety must come first now,” said Laurence Tubiana, an architect of the Paris Agreement and CEO of the European Climate Foundation.

Speaking to reporters before the announcement, Tubiana said the pandemic had made carrying out the formal international diplomacy necessary for countries to ramp up their climate plans “really difficult”.

“I think we have to be innovative on the way we keep the momentum going,” she said, adding that governments would have to move away “from a diplomacy only focused on UN Climate Change” and coordinate with others on how stimulus packages can help accelerate the green transition.

Christiana Figueres, former head of UN Climate Change, added “there can be no pushing off the urgent need for climate action in 2020”.

Earlier this year, the UK called the summit its top international priority for 2020, a year when London is also trying to sort out a new relationship with the European Union after Brexit.

In 2021, the UK is due to preside over the G7 and Italy, which submitted a joint bid with London to preside over Cop26 and is due to organise preparatory events known as the pre-Cop, the G20.

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Governments are under pressure to submit tougher climate plans to the UN this year to bridge the gap between current levels of commitments to cut emissions and levels needed to limit global temperature rise “well below 2C”, in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

So far, only four countries – the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Moldova – have submitted more ambitious climate plans to the UN. On Monday, Japan became the first G7 country to submit an updated plan, but it merely reaffirmed its existing 2030 goal, set in 2015.

If the talks are postponed well into 2021, governments will also have what is likely to be a bleak report about the mounting risks of global warming from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be published in mid-April.

The virus outbreak is also threatening developing countries’ plans to step up climate action this year as expert meetings are being postponed and resources are mobilised to address the public health crisis.

Speaking to Climate Home News, Tenzin Wangmo, of Bhutan and the lead negotiator for the group of Least Developed Countries (LDC), said most countries had only started to work on this climate plans when the virus spread across the world.

“It’s going to be tough to submit climate plans this year,” agreed Carlos Fuller, of Belize and the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.

The post Cop26 climate talks postponed to 2021 amid coronavirus pandemic appeared first on Climate Home News.

Measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, also known as Covid19, are ramping up globally, with tougher travel restrictions forcing meetings to be postponed later into the year and squeezing timetables for decisions.

An intergovernmental conference aiming to establish a global ocean treaty to protect marine biodiversity in the high seas, beyond areas of national jurisdiction, is the latest of a series of global meetings to be affected by the virus.

A draft decision to postpone the meeting is expected to be considered by the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

The fourth and final round of government negotiations on marine biodiversity had been due to take place at the UN headquarters in New York from 23 March to 3 April.

On Friday, UN Climate Change said it would not hold any physical meetings in its headquarters in Bonn, Germany, or elsewhere in the world from 6 March to the end of April.

Legal gaps and US election could delay climate ambition before Glasgow summit

12 meetings planned between now and the end of April could be affected by the decision, according to UN Climate Change’s calendar. This includes the Adaptation Fund board meeting which has now been postponed.

UN Climate Change secretariat said it was working to find alternative arrangements, including virtual meetings, in coming months.

In a statement, executive secretary of UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa said the decision to suspend meetings until the end of April acknowledged “the increasing challenges posed by travel restrictions and quarantine measures that some countries have imposed on travellers from Germany”.

Over the past few days, some meetings were unable to make progress because of delegates absence, she said, adding: “Some forthcoming meetings require quorum which can be affected by last-minute cancellations or non-attendance by members or alternates.”

The delays are putting increasing pressure on an already tight timetable ahead of a major biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, in October and UN climate talks in Glasgow, UK, known as Cop26, in November.

In Kunming, countries are due to agree on a new global framework to protect biodiversity over the next decade. In Glasgow, countries are under pressure to enhance their climate plans for the next 10 years and finalise rules for a global carbon market.

Power structures over gender make women more vulnerable to climate change

And the impact is being felt across the UN.

Last month, a preparatory meeting for the biodiversity summit in Kunming, had to be relocated from China to Rome, Italy.

For shipping, the International Maritime Organisation has already postponed two meetings due to take place this month. A key meeting of the IMO’s environmental protection committee held in London from 30 March to 3 April could also be affected.

The committee is expected to review proposals to improve the energy efficiency of ships. A decision on whether to uphold the meeting could be taken later this week, an IMO spokesperson told Climate Home News.

Africa Climate Week, which was due to take place in Kampala on 20-24 April, was also postponed. Uganda is still due to host the meeting but at a later, unconfirmed, date.

Elsewhere, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) board meeting is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, this week, instead of at its headquarters in Songdo, in South Korea. Attendance to the meeting, where board members are due to approve a new strategic plan for the next four years, has been restricted.

Liane Schalatek, an observer to the GCF meeting from the environmental think-tank Heinrich Böll Foundation who is unable to attend the meeting, told CHN this will be “an interesting test case” for whether transparency and remote participation can work at scale via webcasting.

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The scale of the impacts of Covid-19 on the global timetable for action on biodiversity and climate change is not yet known.

Speaking at the UN on Friday, Cop26 president Alok Sharma said the UK, alongside Italy which is hosting the pre-Cop, will be “creating a drumbeat of action in the calendar of international events leading up to Cop26”. The whole of Italy has since been put on lockdown because of the virus.

In private, climate diplomats told CHN the impact could be much greater if Covid-19 were to affect climate talks in Bonn in June, when countries are due to lay the ground work ahead of Cop26.

A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency team said the summit was still many months away but it was “monitoring the situation closely”.

“Our officials are attending planned engagements but we are aware that this is an issue which may affect some international travel. We will adapt our plans accordingly to ensure necessary discussions and diplomacy with international partners can continue,” she said.

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Meanwhile, it is still unclear whether a key EU-China meeting at the end of the month in Shanghai can go ahead as planned.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council president Charles Michel are due to travel to Beijing to prepare an EU-China summit in Germany in September.

The EU is hoping to engage Beijing in a race to the top to ensure global action to curb emissions remains meaningful ahead of Cop26, even without the US on board.

Last month, EU Commission’s climate chief Frans Timmermans’ planned trip to Beijing was cancelled. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also cancelled his trip to Brussels amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

On Monday, the World Health Organisation reported 1,112 cases in Germany and more than 110,000 confirmed cases across the world. More than 3,800 people have died of the virus so far.

The post Coronavirus delays global efforts for climate and biodiversity action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Christiana Figueres, who headed the UN Climate Change secretariat from 2010 to 2016, urged governments, cities and citizens to halve world greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and cut emissions to net zero by 2050 to tackle what she called a “dire emergency”.

“This decade is the critical, decisive decade for the future of humanity and the planet,” she told Climate Home News of her book, “The Future we Choose”, which will go on sale on Tuesday.

It is co-written with Tom Rivett-Carnac, who also helped build the 2015 Paris climate pact.

Figueres, a former Costa Rican diplomat, said the UN summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in December will be a vital moment to chart the course towards a cleaner future away from fossil fuels.

UN Environment says that a goal of almost halving greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade works out at annual emissions cuts of 7.6% per year worldwide in the 2020s – rates previously associated with wars, recessions or slumps such as the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Emissions have risen in most recent years.

In a phone interview from Costa Rica, Figueres, 63, said it was not wide-eyed naivety to reckon such unprecedented cuts were possible and advocated an attitude of “stubborn optimism” for the 2020s to achieve a goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.

“We know there are going to be many stumbling blocks along the way. This is difficult. We cannot delude ourselves,” she said. “There is no guarantee of success but not trying is a guarantee of failure.”

‘Mysterious’ seasons harm Nigeria’s farmers who need help with climate change

Among hurdles to action are the United States, where Trump doubts climate change is a major problem and is seeking to bolster jobs in the fossil fuel industry.

Figueres said the US risked losing out to China and other nations which were investing heavily in renewable energies such as solar and wind.

“That is so short-sighted on the side of the federal government, to keep its [fossil fuel] industry in the 20th century,” she said. “It is similar to giving signals to the US communications industry to say ‘you know what, we don’t think cellphones are really the thing. Let’s go back to landlines’.”

In the book, she also criticises those who doubt mainstream scientific findings that climate change is primarily caused by human activities.

“President Donald Trump is the most prominent example,” the book says, adding: “Denying climate change is tantamount to saying you don’t believe in gravity.”

Trump is pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement in a withdrawal that will formally take effect on 4 November – five days before the start of the climate talks in Glasgow. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Figueres’ remarks.

Figueres said she was encouraged that all the current Democratic candidates to take on Trump promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement if elected.

‘Mysterious’ seasons harm Nigeria’s farmers who need help with climate change

Her book portrays an imaginary 2050 scenario when the world suffers the impacts of inaction – people wear masks against pollution, crops are grown under cover to ensure stable conditions. Most coral reefs are dead, rising seas are forcing evacuations inland, and the European Union has disbanded under political strain.

An alternative imagines what could happen if governments act – the air is clean, trees have been planted almost everywhere. High speed electric rail networks in the US have replaced most domestic flights, fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

She said she took heart from a flattening of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency, that might be a hint that a peak in emissions was close after decades of steady growth.

Her book also points to breakthroughs long thought impossible – the US moon landing in 1969, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and the end of apartheid in South Africa.

“This is a revolution for the high road … at a global level,” she said, also noting that her father, late Costa Rican president José Figueres Ferrer, decided to abolish the national army in 1948, the only nation to have done so.

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And technology is helping – prices of solar panels have fallen 90% in the past decade. Pressure for action is also growing, for instance by Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, as well as green commitments by more and more companies, investors and cities.

Figueres said individuals can play their part by making climate change a top priority in voting and changing their lifestyles. She said she had cut her own carbon footprint by dropping red meat from her diet and travelling by public transport when possible.

But she still has high emissions from travel – Figueres and Rivett-Carnac will unveil the book in New York on Tuesday, then go on a tour in places including Washington, Australia and Paris.

At a news conference in Bonn when she was appointed to the UN job in 2010, she was asked when she reckoned climate change would be solved.

‘Not in my lifetime,” she said, something she writes in the book was an error. Now, she said an emphatic “yes” to the same question. Barring accidents and illness, she will be 73 in 2030 and 93 in 2050. She hopes her genes favour longevity – and one of her grandfathers lived to 105.

The post World faces ‘decisive decade’ to fix global warming, former UN climate chief says appeared first on Climate Home News.

An amendment by Democrat senator Jeff Merkley would restore the funding stripped from the overseas budget for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its science wing, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In March, president Donald Trump’s budget proposal stripped funding from the state department’s contribution to the UN’s climate process.

The US has traditionally contributed around 20% of the operational funding – $6.44m – for the secretariat of the UNFCCC and last year provided $2m to the IPCC, around 45% of its budget. The US contributes further money to other UN climate initiatives.

Report: EU and others to fill UN climate science funding gap left by Trump

The $10m added by the amendment was earmarked for the UNFCCC and IPCC.

The committee’s ranking democrat senator Patrick Leahy said: “The president sent us a budget that was irresponsible and indefensible. We were provided no credible justification for the cuts that were proposed, which would have severely eroded US global leadership.”

Leahy called the president’s budget request “reckless” and said: “This bill does not do enough to protect our national security interests.  Underfunding many critical programs – from UN peacekeeping to climate change to humanitarian relief for victims of war and natural disasters – is unacceptable for the world’s wealthiest, most powerful nation.”

The press office of the UNFCCC said it did not want to comment on the development.

The work of the UNFCCC is supported by obligatory payments, which are tested against each country’s wealth. Trump has indicated that, even if the US leaves the Paris Agreement, it will remain part of the treaty that formed the UNFCCC. Thus, it would remain liable for the obligatory payments. Although his budget indicates the president does not intend to honour the treaty.

All of the IPCC’s funding comes through extra voluntary payments to the UNFCCC, which nations can earmark for the science panel.

Other wealthy member states have been loathe to come forward and publicly offer to replace US payments to the treaty organisation, citing their belief that the US has a responsibility to meet their obligations under the treaty.

On Thursday, Climate Home reported that other countries – including the European Commission, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and the UK – were preparing to step in to fill the funding gap and save the IPCC from plunging into millions of dollars of debt.

The amendment passed through the committee 16 to 14. All the Democrats in the committee voted for the amendment, except Joe Manchin the West Virginian senator. Two Republicans Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins voted in favour.

The House appropriations bill did not replace the funding stripped by Trump and the final outcome of the budget will need to be negotiated between the chambers.

A further amendment, which would have sent $750m to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, which assists poor countries with adapting to climate change, was rejected by the committee.

The post US senate committee votes to reinstate funding to UN climate treaty appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to Climate Analytics, 57 countries have now indicated they will ratify or have already ratified the agreement by year’s end. They account for 59.88% of global emissions.

“Under this scenario, the Paris Agreement will enter into force by the end of the year,” said the Berlin-based consultancy.

Announcements made by Japan and New Zealand on Wednesday tipped numbers over the dual requirements for the agreement to enter into force of 55 countries and 55% of emissions. The agreement will be activated 30 days after enough countries have ratified the deal.

Source: Climate Analytics

The UN’s new climate chief Patricia Espinosa said on Wednesday that she was “very hopeful” enough parties would follow through on their intentions.

In her first interview since succeeding Christiana Figures in May, the Mexican diplomat laid down a challenge to governments to get on with the task.

“Now is the time for ratification and for implementation. It is the time to act together, it is the time to avoid any disastrous consequences of climate change,” she told the UN’s in-house news service.

So far just 22 states, representing just 1.08% of global greenhouse emissions, have taken this step. Leaders have been invited to attend a special event on September 21 where they will be invited to present their ratification to UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon.

Climate Analytics’ assessment does not include India, which accounts for 4.1% of emissions and is a powerful political force in the talks. India made a joint commitment with the US in June, in which the US committed to ratifying the deal this year, but India’s timeframe was left ambiguous.

Getting ratification is more difficult than a signature: so far 180 countries have signed the deal. Ratification indicates a government has the domestic power to bind their country to the deal, sometimes this requires approval from domestic lawmakers.

If the targets are reached by October 7, the agreement will be in place before countries come together at the next major climate meeting in Morocco in November.

This would also avoid the possibility of a Donald Trump disaster.

If he wins the presidency in November (the election is midway through the UN meeting) Trump has variously promised to “cancel” and “renegotiate” the Paris deal. But once the agreement enters into force, a clause means all countries will be bound to it for four years.

Once the deal was law, the next stage of the fight against climate change will be to hold all governments to the commitments they made in Paris, said Espinosa.

“We need to focus a lot on implementation of the Paris agreement and which translates to the national programmes on climate change for each and every country. We will need to reach out to all those actors – to governments, to civil societies, to businesses – and help in mobilising them to help in this fight against climate change,” she said.

Espinosa was the Mexican foreign minister who chaired the Cancun climate talks in 2010. Many credit these talks with resuscitating a process grown moribund after the Copenhagen talks failed to deliver a consensus the year before. Since then, she said, the climate process had transformed.

“Today, there is not only trust – there is an enormous enthusiasm about participating in this agenda and about being apart about this transformation process,” said Espinosa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiIpeP_IhiI

In a wide-ranging interview, she also discussed her personal motivations for taking on the job. She spoke of visiting disaster struck areas in Latin America during her time as foreign minister.

“I could see very clearly how much suffering this causes, really, a lot of suffering that should not happen,” she said. “In many senses the responsibility, the possibility of becoming the UNFCCC executive secretary brings together a lot of these issues for which I’ve worked for all my life.”

It was this sense of responsibility that Espinosa said she would appeal to when asking leaders to make long-term decisions for the global benefit.

“Actually, climate change is really about the wellbeing of people. It is not a very vague concept or a vague problem that is out of our everyday lives. It is actually affecting our everyday lives and this is the fundamental fact that everybody should keep in mind while working toward a low-carbon society.

“We are talking about the lives of people. So having that consideration in mind, it’s a big driver towards more ambitious and urgent action by everybody,” she said.

The post Paris climate agreement set to become law this year appeared first on Climate Home News.

India pavilion at COP21 venue in Paris. (Pic: Avik Roy)

By Avik Roy in Paris

India is the world’s fifth largest economy, a nuclear power, an aspiring actor on the world stage with a charismatic prime minister – and it’s also one of the planet’s top carbon polluters.

The country is frequently cited as one of the main reasons why UN climate talks grind to a halt. Behind every lost day there are always whispers: it’s the Indians again.

But is this fair? Should a country with 300 million without access to power really be expected to lead on slashing the fossil fuels that have brought higher living standards to developed countries?

“It is unfair to call India problematic. In fact, it is a motivated campaign to shut and sideline India at the Paris climate conference,” Chandra Bhushan of Centre for Science and Environment said on the sidelines of the Paris talks.

“What India is demanding is the demand of the poor of the world. The rich countries are very uncomfortable with this. They do not know how to counter India so are spreading the canard that India is a problem,” he added.

Liz Gallagher, climate diplomacy programme leader of E3G, also agreed that India was not – this time at least – slowing progress – citing prime minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a global coalition to boost solar power.

“India has come with a constructive tone. It is not blocking the talks. India’s leadership in forming a global solar alliance shows its assertiveness in shaping the climate talks rather being reactive to it,” she said.

Report: India, China planned coal plants could blow UN warming target

Still, a closer look at the facts suggests the issues at stake are more complex.

While India has embarked on an ambitious renewable energy pathway, coal is likely to remain its primary source of energy for the next few decades at least.

That makes the country’s negotiators unwilling to back tougher proposals on the table in Paris that would see the world economy decarbonised by 2100.

New Delhi hopes to bring down its dependence on coal for electricity production from the current 61% to 57% by 2031, and boost the share of non-fossil fuel to 40% of India’s total energy mix by 2030.

The contribution of renewable energy in total electricity generation is projected to grow from 12% to 29%, a recent Indian government projection said.

John Kerry: India poses ‘challenge’ at UN climate talks

Those proposals have failed impress some experts.

The Climate Action Tracker think tank released a new analysis on emissions from coal plants, and raised questions over India’s obsession towards coal plants.

“It is clear that India would be making a very risky investment for sustainable development by going too much further into coal when the alternatives are both cheaper, more cost-effective and have a much lower environmental, health, and agricultural damage on the country,” Bill Hare of Climate Analytics said.

India could blow the UN’s 2C warming target if it continues to invest in coal – the most polluting fossil fuel – he said.

That would undoubtedly place India – a country highly vulnerable to future climate impacts – under immense strain.

In a warning of potential impacts to come, the southern city of Chennai has been devastated by floods over the past two weeks from exceptionally heavy rains.

As part of a global deal rich, poor and emerging economies are working on a deal that will see them all of them face some share of the burden of slashing emissions.

The contentious question is who does what and on what basis is it measured?

“There cannot be any separation of developed and developing countries on the basis of economic parity of 1990,” said an EU negotiator earlier this week.

“The world has changed much since then. Emerging economies like India need to understand the onus lies on them too.”

Report: Meet the Indian islanders losing ground to the sea

What’s clear is that India’s top envoys don’t believe the country should take a carbon cutting hit for the rest of the world.

“We are ramping up our renewable energy capacity by seven times and it would be really unfortunate if that effort is not appreciated. Coal would also grow but it is necessary for our development,” said Ajay Mathur, lead negotiator for India.

Coal and energy minister Piyush Goyal agrees.

“We are not at all apologetic of using coal. The US and the West have developed on the back of cheap energy — coal — for the last 150 years ramping up their coal consumption from 0.5 metric tonnes in 1870 to nearly 4.5 metric tonnes per capita few years ago.”

Video: Jairam Ramesh talks up India’s climate progress

So where next? Does the world allow India to burn so much coal that dangerous warming is guaranteed, or does it – as others argue – step in and work with the government in New Delhi?

Carbon capture technologies are expensive and not widely available. As it stands they will not be available in time to help.

Harjeet Singh from Action Aid India says India needs to be engaged rather than criticised, and stresses it needs help with clean technology and funding for green technology.

“On its part India is doing a lot, for instance, the solar alliance that it formed. The reason India is dependent on coal is to make sure that some 300 million have access to electricity.

“Coal is not an obsession for India, it is a compulsion. That needs to be understood,” he says.

Singh argues that India’s longer term energy pathway could be much cleaner than planned if clean technologies continue to advance apace.

“Let’s talk about finance. Let’s help India scale up its target. 175 GW is not a cakewalk,” he says.

“You need technology for storage which is not there. You need a base load for which India is dependent on coal. How do we help India achieve that target?”

Will India be bullied or cajoled into tougher climate targets? That’s unlikely.

This week PM Modi wrote in Financial Times it would be “morally wrong” for the country not to be allowed the chance to use fossil fuels to develop.

Still, in the end it’s unlikely to be the outside world that drives change in India, rather it will be citizens tired of living with filthy air.

Residents of Delhi – one of the most polluted cities on earth – are growing restless at the increasing number of toxic smogs that blanket the city.

The same can be said for other major Indian urban areas. Development is all very well, but if you can’t breathe, you water is polluted and the forests are gone, what then?

The post India: Paris climate talks problem-child or green leader? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Prime minister Narendra Modi opens the India pavilion at COP21 (Pic: Avik Roy)

By Avik Roy in Paris

Other countries must accept India will burn coal to bring electricity to millions without, energy minister Piyush Goyal said as UN talks opened in Paris.

At a press briefing, he told journalists solar energy alone would not meet India’s development needs.

“The developed countries also need to understand that India needs a base load for its ambitious power plans and economic growth plans. In any case, if we don’t have a base load we don’t have any renewable energy. It is integral element of India’s development imperative. We don’t have gas so obviously the base load will have to be coal to provide 24/7 power”, said Goyal.

India is looking at rapid economic growth in the next few years, because of which its greenhouse gas emissions will grow. India is already the world’s fourth biggest emitter after China, the US and EU.

Report: Terrorism, climate conflict dominate opening day of Paris talks

Although no country has demanded that India reduce its greenhouse gases, there have been repeated suggestions that, just as the developed countries are required to act, emerging economies like India too curb their emissions. Indian negotiators said they will ensure no such proposal is included in the agreement.

“Countries like India are being expected to increase their emission targets without guarantees they will be helped financially,” said Oxfam’s Tim Gore.

India has been telling the international community that it can complete its climate action plans much faster if international support in the form of finance and technology comes its way.

More than 60 per cent of India’s electricity is generated by burning coal. Developed countries have been urging India to leapfrog to cleaner sources. India has already mapped out an aggressive and ambitious pathway for renewable energy, but because the overall national energy production would also increase, the dependence on coal is expected to continue for another 30 or 40 years.

Solar v coal: Can India shift from fossils to sunbeams fast enough?

While India is rapidly expanding its renewable energy capacity, it is also engaged in developing clean coal technology research, encouraging ultra-supercritical power plants. When journalists present asked the minister if India’s obsession towards coal goes against its pledge for walking clean on energy, Goyal said: “We cannot do renewable without coal.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry recently ruffled some feathers in Indian delegation when he said it was regrettable that India was continuing to use its inefficient domestic coal because it was cheap. However, India has already made it clear that it would reject any proposal in Paris that could potentially restrain its ability to use domestic coal.

“We are not at all apologetic of using coal. The US  and the West have developed on the back of cheap energy — coal — for the last 150 years ramping up their coal consumption from 0.5 metric tonnes in 1870 to nearly 4.5 metric tonnes per capita few years ago”, said Goyal, adding, “We are not responsible for the problem. Our share is only 2 percent in the global greenhouse gas emission. It is a problem accumulated over last 150 years.”

John Kerry: India poses ‘challenge’ at UN climate talks

A key negotiator added that from 1990 till about 2012 only a few European nations reduced their coal consumption. China, in a deal with the US last year, promised to peak its emissions by 2030, indicating a continued reliance on coal over the next decade.

India’s lead negotiator at COP21, Ajay Mathur, said: “We have committed that the world will move to a path of less than 2 degree so countries will need to do more. We need the developed nations to take the lead and show ambition for 2020 target.”

The annual United Nations climate conference formally began in Paris on the evening of Sunday 29 November, a day earlier than originally planned. On Monday, leaders of some 150 nations set the stage for a global agreement with a series of speeches.

The Indian ministers and negotiators seemed relaxed and confident about India’s role in this climate talks. They were looking forward to arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reached Paris yesterday night after addressing the nation on climate change.

On Monday, Modi formally opened the India pavilion which has grabbed eyeballs this year — it was the first time India had put up a pavilion at the annual conference to showcase its philosophy and approach towards climate change.

Later in the day, Modi was set to launch a global solar alliance, bringing together tropical countries to promote solar energy. At least 30 heads of states signed up to attend, Indian officials said.

The post No renewables without coal, says Indian energy minister appeared first on Climate Home News.

Christiana Figueres and Laurence Tubiana give a press conference (Flickr/UNclimatechange)

By Ed King in Bonn

Work on building a global climate deal showed progress on the final day of a UN conference in Bonn, with officials chairing the process revealing they would release a new, slimmer draft text in early October.

Dan Reifsnyder, a State Department diplomat co-chairing the talks told reporters the proposed new text would be “coherent, concise, and comprehensive.”

“What I hope we will be able to do this next time is something that will truly be a better basis for the parties to go forward, see the issues from end to end and negotiate on the substance in detail – with options,” he said.

UN climate chief Christiana Figures said work on the new text, which received wide support from all 195 governments on Friday afternoon, would represent a “change of pace” at the talks.

Report: Rich countries to unveil climate finance package

The current set of proposals ranges to over 80 pages and encompasses widely differing views on how the world can avoid global warming above the 2C danger level.

Most observers RTCC spoke to said the document as it stood was not suitable but few countries at this week’s talks have offered a sense of how the text could be radically slashed in time for a December summit where a deal is set to be signed off.

Reifsnyder said progress had been made on clarifying the general objectives of the deal but admitted talks on who will provide climate finance and adaptation were complex.

Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s climate advisor, said talks had allowed better understanding on a long term emissions goal and how reviews of national climate plans every five years could work.

Inaction kills – one of the few “actions” from youth at #ADP2 this week pic.twitter.com/sdQYaDDkWm

— Edward King (@rtcc_edking) September 4, 2015

Countries were also edging closer over the issue of loss and damage from climate related extremes, said Maldives diplomat Amjad Abdulla.

“There’s a growing recognition of the issue, and that’s positive, but it’s a matter of where and a narration of the issue,” he said.

France’s chief climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana acknowledged the slow pace of the talks, but said it had allowed countries to “know the position of everybody”.

“Now we have to go from this to a global picture and assemble all the pieces of the puzzle,” she added.

Moving forward

WWF climate talks expert Tasneep Essop said news countries would allow the co-chairs to craft a text was a sign of the trust they had built with countries since taking control of talks in January.

“We would want to leave this session with a very clear idea of what the next steps are in terms of a text that can be negotiated from day 1 in the October session,” she said.

Elina Bardram, lead negotiator for the European Union, said a new draft text should be concise, wipe out duplicated ideas and offer a coherent narrative.

“This would allow us to make real headway in the negotiations,” she said.

Initial steps to cut the text down to size started this week, revealed veteran climate negotiations expert Alden Meyer from the US Union of Concerned Scientists.

“I don’t know how far they have gone but work has started and those parties can continue to work jointly between now and October to make suggestions of additional proposals,” he said.

Five days remain for discussions on a global deal ahead of the two-week Paris summit. A final Bonn conference is scheduled for the end of next month.

The post UN climate talks inch forward as countries agree path to Paris appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN climate change body chief Christiana Figueres (far left) and French foreign affairs minster Laurent Fabius on Day One in Bonn (Photo: UN)

By Alex Pashley

Progress was glacial at UN climate talks in Bonn as delegates tarried in slimming down a draft global warming treaty to be adopted in Paris in December.

After four days, negotiators had trimmed just 5% of the 90-page rough copy, head of the Alliance of Small Islands States delegation, Amjad Abdulla told RTCC.

“We are deeply concerned at the slow pace,” said the Maldivian official leading the 44-country bloc threatened by rising sea levels.

Over 190 nations are haggling over the content of a climate pact, committing all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 2020.

As the summit opened, French foreign minister and chair of the December summit, Laurent Fabius sought to breathe life into talks by urging a ‘pre-agreement’ by October, with Paris “adding the finishing touches”.

But slow progress could dash chances of a swift deal. France has said it may intervene with its own text to strike a deal at the crunch summit if negotiations stall.

Action areas

Delegates are expected to move forward on three main areas throughout the two-week conference.

Those are establishing regular intervals binding nations to deeper carbon cuts; a goal to reduce emissions to ‘net zero’ in the next half of the century; and deciding who pays what into a $100 billion a year climate fund for poor countries vulnerable to climate impacts.

“Negotiators are going to need to get much further along before they reach Paris, so they can present those critical questions to leaders,” said David Waskow from the World Resources Institute.

He said declarations at the G7 summit, gathering leading industrialised nations in Germany this weekend, could spur the talks.

Officials had cleared some of the “low hanging fruit”, making minor changes like cutting out duplicated areas of text, said Abdulla.

He expected a shorter version of 50-60 pages at the end of the two-week conference.

Delegates work away at the conference (photo: UN)

Right action

Though it wasn’t a case of making the text shorter, but stronger, said Lou Leonard at WWF-US in a statement.

“Right now you have almost every option you could want in the text. Parties need to focus on maintaining the elements that would trigger the most ambition,” she said.

So far, almost 40 have submitted pledges to cut emissions, known in UN parlance as intended nationally determined contributions.

But analysts say they won’t be collectively adequate to prevent temperatures rising over 2C by 2100 since the Industrial Revolution.

For that reason countries like the EU call for countries to be bound to deeper cuts after certain intervals.

The world needs to cease the burning of fossil fuels between 2055-2070 to stay within 2C according to scientists.

And countries’ interrogation of each other is key to ensuring a robust pact.

The US, Brazil and China voiced doubts over Australia’s commitment to slash emissions by 5% by 2020 on 2000 levels. Canada was taken to task over tar sands emissions causing it to miss targets.

Q: US asks Canada will you actually regulate tar sands emissions since you estimate that pollution from that source will double #UNFCCC

— Jake Schmidt – NRDC (@jschmidtnrdc) June 4, 2015

While Japan was awarded the ‘Fossil of the Day award’, an accolade critical of its climate action by campaigners, for its ‘weak’ INDC announced by PM Shinzo Abe this week.

It said it would target a 26% reduction on 2013 levels by 2030, a level critics say will mean it will miss a goal by rich countries to decarbonise by 80% on 1990 levels by mid-century.

Three strikes and you’re out! Japan awarded THREE Fossil of the Day awards at UN climate talks http://t.co/Ny0LiV4KGx pic.twitter.com/ArDzdHQ80e

— CAN-International (@CANIntl) June 4, 2015

Six more days remain in the Bonn talks. Delegates will gather again in September and October, some 20 days to refine the text before the crunch Paris summit starts.

“The engine is rumbling and in gear,” David Waskow said, “but they have to get it a couple of gears higher.”

The post Bonn climate talks start slow as hefty text avoids chop appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: IISD

By Sophie Yeo

Deeply entrenched positions are holding back attempts to negotiate a draft text for the UN climate deal at talks this week in Bonn.

In just over a year, countries must reach consensus on politically difficult issues for an agreement in Paris, including whether rich countries should compensate now for their historical emissions.

Officials met in Bonn for what co-chairs of the process called the “bridge building session”. But remarks from some negotiators and officials guiding the talks showed there was a way to go.

“Sticking to positions is not negotiating,” said Kishan Kumarsingh, co-chair of the talks, opening the session on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of G77+China, a large bloc of developing countries, a negotiator from Bolivia said on Tuesday: “It is important to listen to each other. We need a more interactive and dynamic process. We need to question. We need clarifications and to look for common ground, even texts, if possible.”

Difficult discussions

As the EU heads into domestic negotiations over its 2030 targets, a statement sent out by a bloc of countries including India, China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Ecuador, said that they were “gravely concerned” that rich countries “no longer seem willing to live up to their commitments”.

The statement accused developed countries of backing out of promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide support to developing countries.

This group, known as the like minded developing countries (LMDCs), is pushing back against the notion that rich and poor countries must both take on binding commitments under the new deal.

US negotiator Todd Stern has made clear that any deal which perpetuates the division between developed and developing countries – as used in the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s only climate treaty to date – will be a non-starter.

But the controversy at the heart of this week’s negotiations is what information countries need to include when they submit their contributions to the new deal to the UN by March next year.

Some want these pledges to include mitigation only, while others want to see promises of finance, adaptation, technology transfer and other elements that will be included in the final agreement.

The US is backing a proposal put forward by New Zealand, also backed by Australia. But it has not been welcomed by some other blocs, who reject its outright focus on mitigation.

Compromise

Andres Pirazzoli, an envoy representing Chile, told RTCC that countries were beginning to show flexibility on the talks relating to pre-2020 ambition on climate action, but that the spirit of compromise was still lagging in the post-2020 part of the talks.

“The sad thing is – and this is probably the case for the entire history of the negotiations – the most creative, flexible and active listeners in this business are the most vulnerable ones,” he said.

He said the least developed countries, small island states, and the Africa group were working hard to accommodate others, while his own grouping – a progressive Latin American alliance called AILAC – was trying to build bridges.

For the session to be a success, he added, there would need to be convergence between countries on the type of information that countries should provide in their contributions to the new agreement, as well as more agreement on how the elements of the final text should work.

A text by the co-chairs of the session, Kishan Kumarsingh and Artur Runge-Metzger, was welcomed by his group as the basis for the negotiations. “We feel very comfortable empowering the co-chairs to guide our negotiations,” said Pirazzoli.

Bridge building

The co-chairs said at the outset they had nicknamed this round of negotiations the “bridge building session”.

But their approach has rankled with other countries, with some rejecting outright the text compiled by the co-chairs on the information that parties should put forward.

“There was a general expression of unhappiness with the co-chair’s text,” said Alden Meyer, an observer of the negotiations from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The like minded developing countries did not think the co-chairs should be involved with drafting the text, he explained.

They also complained it was overly concerned with mitigation, at the expense of elements such as finance and adaptation.

The president of the next meeting in Lima, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, stressed that he wanted parties to arrive with “clear and substantive” ideas for the draft text, but he was confident that countries were beginning to move towards consensus.

Despite his confidence, the UN is already considering when it will hold extra sessions for negotiations next year, as diplomats attempt to cram in all the work that needs to be done ahead of next year’s vital Paris deal.

“The word I should use is hope. I’m hopeful… Nothing has really taken shape,” said Ruel Yamuna, a diplomat representing Papua New Guinea.

The post UN climate talks: Countries urged to build bridges appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Security & Defence Agenda/Flickr)

By Ed King

Local and national efforts to address climate change are more likely to succeed than any UN initiative, according to former NATO secretary general Javier Solana.

The veteran diplomat, who was also Spain’s foreign minister from 1992-1995, argues in opinion blog Project Syndicate that “only science” will offer an effective solution to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

“Top-down governance approaches have been useful,” he writes, adding “the most recent UNFCCC [the UN’s climate body] summits have revealed the limits of this approach.”

Citing China’s pilot emission trading schemes, Uganda’s pursuit of solar energy and the pacific island of Tuvalu’s goal of carbon neutrality, he argues real ambition to tackle climate issues is only evident at a country level.

But he says the huge number of organisations tasked with addressing the world’s economic and environmental problems means people “often no longer know who is in control”.

And he calls for a “wholesale structural overhaul” of global governance structures to involve developing countries.

“This issue comes to the fore most frequently in the case of shared global problems, such as climate change,” Solana says.

“Simply put, the international order must be reformed and adapted to the economic rise of countries like India and China.

“The recent agreement among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) to establish a New Development Bank and a contingent reserve arrangement is a clear signal of this thirst for change.”

Nearly 200 countries are involved in talks on a global deal to limit warming to 2C, a level deemed safe by the UN.

An agreement is due to be signed off in Paris next December.

The post Ex-NATO chief: UN ability to tackle climate change has limits appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Adopt A Negotiator

By Sophie Yeo

Even in the great labyrinth of Warsaw Stadium, the venue for the UN’s 2013 climate talks, the young people were never hard to spot.

Youth activists stalked the corridors wielding a giant toy dinosaur. They played ball with an inflatable planet earth, handed out chocolate bars in the foyer and harassed delegates while wearing post-apocalyptic costumes.

Pic: RTCC

But behind the scenes, some of their quieter compatriots have taken a different approach in the fight for their future. They have got in with their governments, earned places on official party delegations, and hope to become the next batch of UN climate negotiators.

These are the young people who want to change the system from within.

“Passion is displayed differently across youth,” said Olivia Santiago, a 20-year-old student at Brown University, who works with the small island states delegation during negotiations.

“I’m very passionate about the work I’m doing even though I’m on the inside and show it in a different way, rather than being outwardly vocal and having signs and picketing and walking out.”

Vulnerable people, vulnerable nations

Young people who have managed to infiltrate the mysterious world of closed-door meetings say that they offer a unique perspective to the UN climate talks, which can revitalise the weary conversations of negotiators, some of whom have now been treading the same ground every year since 1992.

“I feel the perspective I bring is a breath of fresh air for some of these veterans who’ve been in it for a long time,” continues Olivia. “You just get a different perspective across different generations, and being a youth is definitely an advantage in negotiation rooms.”

The advantages of involving youth at party level has also been recognised by the UN, with a 2010 report highlighting how it could give young people a “more nuanced understanding of the negotiation dynamics”, which could be fed back to their activist counterparts to strengthen their own lobbying.

Smaller delegations from the developing world have even identified the lack of young people as a threat to the longevity of their teams.

Concern over the lack of resources to coach young people in the complexity of the UN climate talks led the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) bloc to establish an EU-funded climate fellowship training programme for future negotiators.

Lying just a few feet above sea level, the small islands states are one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. They are already feeling the impacts of coastal erosion and salt water inundation as sea levels rise, and many face complete submersion unless serious action is taken to curb global warming.

According to Ili Vakacegu, a 26-year-old from Fiji who is enrolled on the programme, her grassroots knowledge as a young from the potentially doomed region means that she is able to articulate experiences with which her elders will not have had contact.

“The way things are right now in the Pacific, the youth are aware of climate change. We know the effects, we see the effects, we experience the effects, and this is something that is happening globally,” she says.

Rennier Gadabu, a 28-year-old from Nauru also enrolled on the programme, adds: “What we were dealing with 30 years ago is different to what we are dealing with today and tomorrow.”

Inclusion

Apart from these outreach efforts by AOSIS, the inclusion of young people on official party delegations remains an anomaly that both young people and the UN say needs to change.

In the UN climate body’s 2010 report on the participation of youth, they recommended that more young people are included on government delegations in an official capacity and that guidelines are established for their participation.

But it remains up to individual governments to take up this recommendation, and there is no centralised reporting system in place to monitor whether this has been achieved.

No guidelines have yet been issued, although the UN’s climate secretariat is currently conceptualising a joint document on how to involve youth in local, national and international decision making processes.

In addition, the UN General Assembly has issued a raft of resolutions on the need to increase youth access to official UN processes.

“I didn’t see any young people on the US, Chinese or EU delegation, and I would think these big countries should include youths on their delegation, but it’s not for me to decide,” said Olivia.

Aisha’s Maldives adventure

Those who do make it onto the delegations can have big impacts, but may find that some of the veterans of the process are less than grateful for their fresh perspectives.

Aisha Niyaz joined the Maldives government delegation as a one-off experiment in youth participation in 2011 at the UN talks in Durban, South Africa, when she was 26.

Her role as an insider meant that she was able to achieve what no protester had been able to achieve alone – embedding the importance of youth in the final outcome document of that year’s round of talks. The small size of the official Maldives delegation meant that there was no one available to track this, so Aisha decided to take on the mantle.

It was her inexperience which led to her success, said Aisha, as it meant she was willing to speak her mind rather than toeing the party line.

“I wasn’t sure of what you’re supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do, so I just asked why youth wasn’t there,” she said. “One of the AOSIS delegates explained to me that you’re not supposed to say stuff like that, and that it has already been discussed.

“Then she said that she was really happy that I brought it up.”

Aisha may have received a clap from some government delegates when youth was eventually included in the text, but others weren’t so impressed, with one negotiator accusing her of “naivety” and imposing an added burden on developing countries as a result.

An awkward moment. Then, “It’s good to be naïve,” said the Maldives minister, who had overheard the conversation.

Pictures from the Seychelles

But is an early start in the UN climate talks really just the fast-track process to creating a set of negotiators who are jaded before their time?

For young people – as with island nations – both the stakes and the passions are too high to contemplate any future disillusionment, says Olivia.

She holds up the example of Ronny Jumeau, the Seychelles ambassador who has been mentoring her at the talks.

“Ronny will go back and take pictures of beaches, and look at pictures of Seychelles every single day just to remind himself of home and what he’s fighting for.

“I think people my age, as we progress and become the leaders of the UN, as long as we do the same and hold onto our perspective, we’ll remember why we’re fighting for all of this.”

The post When young people infiltrate the UN climate machine appeared first on Climate Home News.

Young activists pose in green glasses during COP17 negotiations in Durban, 2011 (Pic: Sarah Marchildon/Flickr)

By Chris Wright

It must have been 10 or 11pm. I can’t remember exactly when, but I know negotiations should have been over by then.

After two weeks in Doha, my fingers bent into the keyboard and caffeine had begun to compete with white blood cells for space in my veins. 

For two days I had followed negotiations into the mornings and slept in forgotten soft corners of the food court.

The Youth-based Non-Governmental Organisations (YOUNGO) had just called an emergency meeting. We needed to do something about Loss and Damage.

Developed nations were ready to pull the rug from under developing countries’ feet. More than 70 of us ‘young people’ were still in the conference centre, but we didn’t have much time to talk. We had to act. 

We did. At 3am, with stunning visual imagery and heartfelt emotional pleas, our actions spread rapidly and were beamed into living rooms by BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Al Jazeera.

Within 24 hours, rumours that the negotiations were about to break down spun into a story of success. Loss and Damage discussions were saved. Perhaps it had nothing to do with young people.

But perhaps it did.

Young people camp out at the final plenary of COP17 (Pic: UKYCC)

As a 22 year old university student, I still remember how naively excited I was when I first arrived at the UN’s annual climate conference.

After brainstorming solutions with 600 other strange but impressive young people during the Conference of Youth, I was suddenly in the epicenter of the most important negotiations on the planet.

Little did I know that the food would be such a let down.  But I was still excited.

I looked shyly upon every pink- and crimson-badged negotiator both with awe and envy. I had passion to burn and a bouncy castle of acronyms jumping round my head. But it was the acrobatics of young people that impressed me the most.

Young people can be seen as the insignificant clowns of the UN climate talks. It’s no secret. We’re not allowed in the big show, and most of the old lobbies don’t have room for growing bodies and inquisitive eyes.

We’re seen as something to smile upon or avoid. Something to laugh at or perhaps even something to remind negotiators of the “real reason why we’re negotiating”.

But let me tell you what young people really do. We engage and we inspire the UN climate negotiators to possibly greater goals.

We engage

Every year, new young faces flock to the UN climate talks. Outside of the negotiators, we have close to the most representative delegation in terms of size, geographical spread and gender.

This is pretty amazing when you consider that no-one in YOUNGO receives financial support for their efforts.

Each comes with different passions,  skills and an amazing diversity of organisational perspectives. Many have been working voluntarily on youth policy submissions, working groups and logistical needs throughout the year.

However, many also arrive for the first time at the annual Conference of Youth, days before the negotiations begin, without knowing how the UN or the youth constituency operates.

This would be a tough human resource challenge for any organization. But each year we find a way, through passion, perseverance, and democratic panache.

Pic: Young FoEE/Flickr

This year, for instance, hundreds of young Latinos have already begun travelling by bus on a Climate Action road trip from Mexico to Lima.

On their travels they are engaging communities, schools and entire cities around climate change. They will come to Lima not just with a plan for the two weeks of climate talks, but with climate actions prepared for the  months and years ahead.

Once again, this year will not only represent an opportunity to lobby national negotiators, but act as a stage for global collaboration and skill sharing between young people who will be working together on climate action for years to come.

For many young people involved in the UN climate talks, no conference is ever a one-off event. It is a stepping stone into building a stronger, life-long commitment to climate action.

We inspire

When YOUNGO steps inside the negotiations, it is the passion and energy of its young people that connects with negotiators year after year.

While we do represent more than half the world’s population, and the ones who will have to deal with the greatest climate impacts, we do not have thick-pocketed lobbying power that others may enjoy.

What we do have is the energy to inspire. It might not be much, but I have never been at a UN climate conference without talking to a negotiator about how the energy of young people at the conference helped them through a difficult negotiating session.

It’s always tough to measure, but indefatigably present. In every action, lobbying effort, submission paper, corridor chant and hallway theater production, you can always recognize that signature of inspiration from young people.

Take for example our gold star lobbying campaign in Cancun, our “I heart KP” joint-NGO campaign in Durban, our Loss and Damage campaign or some of the radical Civil Society actions in Warsaw at which young people were at the forefront.

Young people also inspire action back home. Young people involved in the UN climate negotiations write blogs, engage national media, and have even started their own NGOs to better inform young people around the world about climate change.

An action taking place at COP18 in Doha (Pic: theverb.org/Flickr)

For instance, during the 2011 climate talks in Durban, South African young people came together with young people around the world to form their first national climate coalition.

At the 2012 talks in Doha, Arab youth from across the region brought an unprecedented amount of pressure on Middle East and North Africa negotiators after forming the Arab Youth Climate Movement.

Again, in Lima, we will see an unprecedented gathering of Latino youth around climate change, seeking to chart a direction for Latino youth collaboration for the years ahead.

Like every constituency, we are heavily involved in strategy meetings and textual analysis that becomes a daily ritual of the UN climate process.

However, it is these unique elements that extend our impact beyond textual submissions, and indeed beyond the UN itself.

When this energy is injected directly into the negotiations, young people can shape the very course of the UN’s climate talks.

Watch out in Lima, we’re about to do it again.

Chris Wright is a young activist at Adopt A Negotiator

The post Youth: The hidden life force behind the UN climate talks? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Young people sit around a wave-submerged negotiating table at the 2010 UN climate talks (Pic: Bunkerfilms.com / 350.org)

By Sophie Yeo

Young people are often the most passionate voices on climate change, and with reason – as the planet warms over the coming century, it is the future of the youngest at stake.

As such, it is often youth that are the loudest and the most ambitious in calling for action, proving to be anything from serious combatants to potential allies to the politicians in charge.

But do their pickets and their pleas actually achieve anything? For RTCC’s Youth Week, we’ve picked 11 moments where young people have made climate history.

1. The young heckler who changed direction of US climate policy

Todd Stern, the US lead on climate change, wore a bemused smile when Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old junior from Middlebury College, interrupted his prepared remarks with a cry for greater leadership at the UN’s 2011 climate conference in Durban. But something must have gone on behind his surprised expression, because, after security had escorted out the young heckler, Stern appeared to change his lukewarm position on an EU’s proposal for a new climate treaty, going on to endorse the idea.

2. The girl who silenced the world for 6 minutes

In 1992, a 12-year-old girl called Severn Suzuki stood up before 172 governments and told them: “If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.” This was at the UN’s Rio conference, where the Convention on Climate Change was born. Suzuki’s speech, which reduced delegates to tears and became a viral video, is now one of the UN’s legendary moments and continues to inspire, earning her the nickname “The girl who silenced the world for six minutes”.

3. The schoolchildren who kept climate change on the curriculum

When UK education secretary Michael Gove wanted to wipe climate change from the school curriculum, the kids were not alright. A 15-year-old London student, part of the UKYCC network, started a petition calling on Gove to keep climate change on the syllabus, which gained over 70,000 signatures. Backed by pressure from UK climate and energy secretary Ed Davey, Gove eventually abandoned his plans to drop climate from the curriculum.

4. The students who got fossil fuels expelled from college

Like a modern-day version of Les Miserables, university students are leading the crusade for a better world. But instead of building barricades, they’re calling on their alma maters to abandon fossil fuels by pulling their investments from dirty industries. In the US, 13 colleges, including Stanford University, have made pledges to divest, and the movement is beginning to take off in the UK as well, with Glasgow and SOAS currently reviewing their investments.

5. When half the world’s population took the floor at the UN

A speech by youth delegate Anjali Appadurai provoked a chant and a rare moment of empathy from a key diplomat at UN’s 2011 climate conference in Durban. Taking the floor, Appadurai told the delegates that she was there to “speak for more than half the world’s population”. At the end of the speech, co-chair Artur Runge-Metzger delivered a rare personal aside: “On a purely personal note, I wonder why we let not speak half of the world’s population first in this conference but only last?”

6. The Maldives youth who made the UN recognise young people

Perhaps the Maldives delegation didn’t know what they had taken on when they agreed to include 26-year-old campaigner Aisha Niyaz onto their team during the UN’s 2011 climate conference. But it was her determination that led to the role of youth being formally acknowledged – in writing – during that year’s round of talks. Youth is an issue close to the heart of many young activists, but it was Aisha’s seat on the delegation that meant she was able to bring it up around the negotiating table and get it included in the final text.

7. The Venezuelan kids who want to change the system, not the climate

In July, climate activists gathered in Venezuela to hatch their own vision of the world, which they hope will be included in the UN’s 2015 climate deal. The conference included a special session entitled “The future takes the floor”, in which young Venezuelan Scout equivalents were able to host some panels and take part in cultural activities. The influence of the Margarita Declaration, which participants produced during the session, will ultimately be determined by ministers, who will receive the document in November.

Pic: @SocialPreCop/Twitter

8. The young entrepreneurs creating a cleaner world

If you need further proof that young people do more than just shout, take a look at Bernice Dapaah and Millie Darling, two entrepreneurs who couldn’t wait to start building a cleaner world. Dapaah, from Ghana, set up the Bamboo Bikes Initiative in 2010 while still at college, creating a green mode of transport out of the sustainable material, earning her the title of World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. At age 21, Darling set up her own energy cooperative in Hackney, London, offering community owned solar energy to local residents.

9. The tiny children who inspire great leaders

It must be frustrating for some politicians that certain children seem to wield greater influence than them over climate change simply by existing. Leaders, including US President Barack Obama, frequently cite their children as the inspiration and the reason for their actions. “You talk to Malia, you talk to Sasha, you talk to your kids or your grandkids – this is something they get,” he said. “They don’t need a lot of persuading.”

10. The Australian who wiped out a coal company

Jonathan Moylan, a 24-year-old Australian, started a dangerous game when he faked a press release from ANZ bank, announcing the withdrawal of a $1.2billion dollar loan to the Maules Creek coal mine project on environmental and ethical grounds. Journalists took the rogue PR wannabe at his word and published the story, temporarily wiping $314m off the value of Whitehaven Coal, the company running the development. Moylan initially faced up to 10 years in prison, but was eventually given a suspended sentence of 1 year 8 months.

11. The nine-year-old who planted a million trees

In 2009, a nine-year-old German boy called Felix Finkbeiner had to do a school presentation on climate change. After some googling, he decided to speak about the Kenyan Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai, who planted 45 million trees. This provided the seeds for his own Plant for the Planet campaign, with the aim of planting a million trees. This was achieved in 2011, and since then Felix has gone on to become an eco-superstar, written a book, and given speeches before the European Parliament and the UN.

The post 11 ways young people have revolutionized the climate debate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Women are in a minority at UN climate talks (Pic: UNFCCC)

Women make up half the global population. Yet at the last count, they held less than a quarter of positions on UN climate committees.

Of the 5,090 people from all over the world at the Doha summit in 2012, 29.4% were female. Among lead negotiators, the figure is lower.

With world leaders set to agree a climate deal in Paris next year, time is running out to influence the outcome. It is widely acknowledged women bear the brunt of climate change and have a valuable perspective to bring to the talks. So how do we make sure women’s voices are heard?

Tasneem Essop, lead climate policy advocate at WWF, argues quotas could be part of the solution.

It is generally accepted that for any real transformation to happen in society one needs a critical mass of those needing change to drive this. They must be represented in decision-making structures.

In the context of gender equity and ensuring that women are at the center of decision-making on sustainable development and climate change, a quota system is useful.

Having one woman or a few women in leadership positions will not automatically result in change for all women. There are enough case studies to show this.

Such a quota system has to also reflect the real differences that exist among women, such as class and geography. Women do not and will not experience the impacts of climate change in the same way.

Poor women will bear a different burden and are likely to be more vulnerable than wealthy women for example. Women’s material conditions and socio-economic status will influence their views on how to deal with climate change. There is not necessarily a common perspective among all women about all matters related to climate change.

A quota system for women is therefore not enough. It will only be successful if it also gives women who are poor and working class a strong voice.
Those who are from the global South and are most marginalised must be represented.

To conclude: a quota for women would help create the critical mass required to drive change. It will not in itself result in real and meaningful change for all women if it does not also factor in the existing power relations among women as well.

We’d like to hear what you think. Are quotas part of the answer?

Does the UN need to take affirmative action to boost the number of women involved at the UN talks?

Or are there other steps the process can take to rebalance the negotiations?

You can use the comments form below, or tweet us using the hashtag #climatefrontline

The post Woman drought at UN climate talks: are quotas the answer? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Christiana Figueres is the UN’s lead climate negotiator (Source: Flickr/UNFCCC)

By Megan Darby

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Nobody could accuse Christiana Figueres of being hard-hearted. Her passion for tackling climate change has many times spilled over into tears.

Yet as UN climate chief, she must be hard-headed. Her reputation hinges on striking a deal between nearly 200 parties with vastly divergent interests and priorities.

And as a woman, she tells RTCC of her determination to put gender equality at the heart of efforts to tackle climate change.

The core task of UN climate talks is to agree a plan to cut the greenhouse gas emissions heating up the planet. The deadline is December 2015, when negotiators meet in Paris.

These cuts must be deep to limit global temperature rises to 2C, the politically agreed “safe” threshold.

That will involve a huge shift away from polluting sources of energy to cleaner alternatives, reshaping the economy.

It is a wrench for some countries that have grown wealthy on the back of dirty fuel. And it is a challenge to those poorer nations tempted to follow the high-carbon path to prosperity.

At stake is nothing less than the economic trajectories of every country in the world, making it perhaps the most fraught political process in history. Every word of every document is subject to minute scrutiny.

Figueres took up the challenge in 2010, after talks in Copenhagen ended in failure. At a time when many people were questioning the value of the whole process, she had a lot to prove.

With so many conflicting positions, reaching agreement is always a challenge. The Durban talks in 2011 came close to collapse before a last-minute deal was struck.

If Paris is to be a success, Figueres must praise the ambitious, spur on the stragglers and keep minds focused on the goal.

In heading for that goal, there needs to be a move away from the “explicit male focus” of policy, she says.

“It is critical that that new economy not only re-establish the relationship between man and nature, which has been thoroughly not respected, but it also re-establishes the balance that is needed between the genders.”

Women make up half the population but are under-represented in the world’s major political and economic institutions; the UN is no different.

All eight secretaries general of the UN since its inception have been male.

At the last count, on the high-level committees delivering climate action fewer than one in four seats were held by women.

Just 29% of the 5,090 delegates at the Doha conference in 2012 were female. That figure includes junior officials; among lead negotiators the proportion is lower.

“I don’t think I am the only woman who is very acutely aware, every time I walk into a room, how many men and how many women are sitting round the table,” says Figueres.

“More often than not, we are in a minority. Quite often, I am the only woman in the room. That is not right.”

Parties to the talks adopted a goal of gender balance in 2012 and the UN monitors the data.

Within Figueres’ department, there is a “preference” to appoint a woman in cases where there are two equally qualified candidates.

“I would not call it affirmative action,” she says.

“I am Miss Impatient,” Figueres says. “I honestly don’t know of any institution that has already been able to effectively meet the challenge.

“No, we are not making enough progress, but does that mean we give up? We just work harder.”

She believes that women can bring a different quality to the talks that helps with reaching agreement.

“What I think is not exclusive to women but perhaps more common among women is our sense of inclusiveness, our sense of awareness of all the different points of view that must be expressed. I often find myself aware, not just of what has been contributed but what has not been said.”

Her desire to include all voices has not always been successful, as when NGOs walked out of 2013’s Warsaw summit in protest at the slow progress – not helped by a hefty coal lobby presence in a parallel conference.

Asked about her role models, Figueres quickly changes the subject. “I was blessed with both male and female role models and I think that is probably a very healthy balance. More important is: what would I like to see with respect to the next generation?”

It does not take a great leap of imagination to deduce who some of those role models might be, however.

The Costa Rican is member of a powerful political dynasty.

Her father, José Figueres Ferrer, served three terms as Costa Rica’s president. Her mother, Karen Olsen Beck, did stints as Costa Rican ambassador to Israel and on the legislative assembly.

Her older brother José Maria followed in his father’s footsteps to become Costa Rican president from 1994 to 1998. Her half-sister Muni is Costa Rica’s serving ambassador to the US.

Whatever advantage she may have gained from being born into such a heavy-hitting family, Figueres is keen to pass it on to others.

“Despite the fact I have a job that keeps me a little bit busy,” she says, with understatement, “I do take time to mentor young women, in particular, who are coming up…

“It is very important that my generation be the last generation that has this imbalance.”

Figueres often cites the next generation in general and her two grown-up daughters in particular as her inspiration for taking on her mammoth diplomatic task.

Taking two weeks leave to enjoy time with at least one daughter. Happy mother! You will not hear much from me over next 14 days.

— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) July 27, 2014

On several occasions, she has shed tears at the enormity of the problem.

She cried in 2010 as she told youth campaigners how they inspired her. She wept in 2011 as she addressed faith groups in Durban. And she was visibly emotional in 2013 as she reflected on “unfair and immoral the impact of climate change on future generations at Chatham House in London.

It is rare to see a male leader display such vulnerability in public, although not unheard of – Figueres’ predecessor Yvo de Boer broke down after an exhausting round of talks in Bali proved fruitless.

A woman choking up risks being labelled weak or manipulative, as Hillary Clinton has found on a couple of occasions.

One climate sceptic blogger snidely remarked Figueres “should consider a career in the movies” for her tearful speech.

To the less cynical observer, Figueres shows an empathy for the victims of global warming that is all too easily lost among the wonkish jargon and abstract concepts of climate talks.

She has argued that as women bear the brunt of climate change, particularly in the developing world, they are uniquely placed to do something about it.

Her UN body highlights climate-friendly initiatives in which women take the lead.

These include training women in Ghana to make and sell bikes made from bamboo, a sustainable material; planting trees and building energy efficient brick stoves in Guatemala; and Australia’s 1 Million Women campaign to cut energy consumption.

While you can’t fault the intentions behind these projects, their impact pales into insignificance besides the investments made by fossil fuel companies, financial institutions and governments.

With a few honorable exceptions – German chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and Christine Lagarde of the IMF spring to mind  – the leaders of these economic powers are male.

As one Grist blogger puts it: “Figueres focuses on minor personal changes, conveniently setting aside the fact that the people with the power to make major environmental decisions are overwhelmingly male.”

Given the small scale of these efforts, how can they make a difference? Figueres says: “We have initiatives in women for results that are both small and large scale.

“The ones that are at small scale, we are very fond of because we see the possibility for nurturing them into larger scale. What we are very intent on is how we can support these initiatives to grow in scale – both in recognition and impact.”

For example Bernice Dapaah, founder of the bamboo bikes business, was named a 2014 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

And Figueres says the bikes have been so in demand Dapaah is hiring more women.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 women have already signed up to the Australian campaign, making it the country’s largest women’s organisation.

Every little helps. But the true test of Figueres’ leadership comes next year, in Paris, when the world must agree an effective climate treaty.

Many rounds have talks have broken down, to the frustration and disappointment of delegates.

Will Paris, too, end in tears? With Figueres at the helm, there is a fair chance of waterworks. But there is every hope for tears of joy at a job well done.

The post Christiana Figueres: Climate deal must bring gender equality appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Flickr/Señor Codo)

By Ed King

The UN has issued its latest set of options for a global climate change deal, but questions over who will make the greatest carbon pollution cuts remain unanswered.

The 22-page document is likely to form the basis of a draft negotiating text, which the UN’s climate body wants ready for its main summit in Lima this December.

Nearly 200 countries are currently involved in work on the agreement, which aims to limit warming to 1.5/2C above pre-industrial temperatures, and is set to be signed off in Paris at the end of 2015.

But it remains unclear how the burden of carbon cuts will be shared between rich and poor countries, a fact acknowledged by the vague language used in this release.

“The 2015 agreement is to be under the Convention and guided by its principles, including common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC), while taking into account national circumstances,” it says.

“Recognizing that applicability to all does not mean uniformity but differentiation in application according to the provisions and principles of the Convention, and that universality does not mean uniformity.”

Latest update

Labelled a ‘non-paper’ and designed to be the catalyst for further discussions, it outlines how the current co-chairs of the UN talks, the European Commission’s Artur Runge-Metzger and Kishan Kumarsingh of Trinidad and Tobago, view negotiations so far.

Drafted after the latest round of UN talks this June, the document stresses the role of developed countries and “parties with the greatest responsibility and highest capacity”.

One option listed is for “all major economies to take absolute economy-wide emission reduction targets”. These are due to be submitted by the end of the first quarter of 2015, ahead of a review process.

The US, EU and other developed countries say leading emerging economies must accept greenhouse gas restrictions for the 2015 deal to work.

And in what is likely to be a politically sensitive set of the talks, the UN says national pledges may face “top-down adjustment based on a global carbon budget… with no backsliding allowed.”

Emissions in Brazil, India, China and South Africa have risen sharply since 1992, when the UN first attempted to tackle climate change and determined which countries bore the greatest responsibility.

Speaking in Beijing today after meetings with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, US climate envoy Todd Stern repeated his position that all major polluters will need to deliver cuts by Paris.

“We don’t quarrel with the basic concept. What we don’t agree with, and what we do quarrel with, is the notion that the way you interpret CBDR is to say that you look at the two categories of countries that were drawn up in the original granddaddy climate change treaty in 1992,” he said.

Stern said he intends to continue talks with China on this issue at the Major Economies Forum meeting in Paris this weekend, and the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin next week.

China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies are likely to further explore their positions at a BRICs meeting in Fortaleza next week, and a gathering of the BASIC coalition in early August.

On course

Liz Gallagher from London-based think tank E3G says the paper offers a “shopping list” for envoys formulating the UN deal.

“It does try and lay out the landscape of what the text might look like,” she says, adding: “It doesn’t frame the future agreement and explain what the regime would look like.”

Gallagher highlights the vague language on climate finance flows from rich to poor countries, a constant thorn in the side of the UN process.

Listing a set of options for raising low carbon capital, the document steers clear of setting out what levels of money should be delivered.

It calls for predictable flows of finance, and suggests developed countries provide 1% of gross domestic product per year from 2020 to the UN’s new Green Climate Fund.

Private sector and ‘alternative’ sources of funding are also mentioned, but the UN says public sources of finance will be needed for the most climate vulnerable countries.

In a separate official report on the Bonn session of talks, Runge-Metzger and Kumarsingh say they are confident negotiations are on track, warning that more work needs to be completed at an October meeting ahead of Lima.

“There is now greater clarity on the way forward on many of the substantive areas and progress has been made towards identifying a limited number of political choices that need to be made for a successful agreement in 2015.”

The post UN presents ‘shopping list’ for 2015 climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

ADP co-Chairs Kishan Kumarsingh and Artur Runge-Metzger (Pic: UNFCCC/Flickr)

By Ed King

The two officials chairing UN climate change negotiations say it is now clearer how a deal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions could come together in 2015.

Reflecting on two weeks of talks in June, Artur Runge-Metzger and Kishan Kumarsingh say there is now an opportunity to develop a draft text for agreement by November.

“There is now greater clarity on the way forward on many of the substantive areas and progress has been made towards identifying a limited number of political choices that need to be made for a successful agreement in 2015,” they say in a new document on the UN website.

Specifically, they say the framework of national pledges to a UN climate deal, and the need for finance and technology support are areas of agreement among all parties.

German diplomat Runge-Metzger and  Kumarsingh, from Trinidad and Tobago, are tasked with helping the 195 parties to the UN’s climate body develop a fair way of ensuring the world does not warm 2C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which more extreme weather events could be expected.

Central to the success of the proposed 2015 agreement will be the delivery of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) which will outline the level of GHG cuts planned by governments.

The chairs say a March 2015 deadline for these to be sent to the UN is still realistic, adding that they may also contain financial and adaptation commitments.

National envoys have one more meeting in October before they head to Lima in December for the annual UN climate summit, usually attended by environment ministers.

“Building on the strong substantive progress made in June, the October session is a window of opportunity not to be missed to deepen negotiations in relation to both the elements for a draft negotiating text and information on INDCs,” say Runge-Metzger and Kumarsingh.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wants a draft text ready by the start of that meeting, so countries can start negotiating on the final aspects of a treaty, scheduled to be signed off in Paris next year.

Further details on how a global deal will work may be revealed at a specially convened climate leader’s summit in New York, hosted by UN chief Ban Ki-moon on September 23.

Ban wants heads of government, NGOs, city mayors and business CEOs to arrive with “concrete proposals” outlining how they plan to address their carbon footprint.

The post UN officials say there is ‘greater clarity’ over 2015 climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: France in India/Flickr)

By Ed King

France and India will work closely together on a proposed UN climate deal, according to French foreign minister Laurent Fabius.

Speaking after a meeting with new Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, Fabius said they had explored ways of deepening cooperation ahead of the 2015 Paris summit.

“We discussed climate change and have been positively impressed by the approach of prime minister Modi and his ministers,” he said.

“And we have decided to prepare for the Paris conference together and it is important because India is a major player in that conference.”

Historically India has been reluctant to pledge to cut its greenhouse gas levels, citing high levels of poverty and the need to develop.

Modi has said he will drive a ‘saffron energy’ revolution, involving an increase in solar deployment, although it remains unclear is this will be matched by a drop in coal use.

As part of that cooperation, Fabius announced a $1.4 billion credit line to finance green infrastructure and urban development.

And in a speech at the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), he outlined plans to work together on offshore wind, ocean thermal energy, nuclear power, urban development and suggested a third Indo-French satellite could be launched to gain a better understanding of weather patterns.

The French government has made achieving a UN climate treaty next year a diplomatic priority, instructing all embassies to reach out to host governments on the issue.

Fabius is seen by many as the face of the meeting, and holds monthly meetings with minister of the environment Segolene Royal to discuss planning.

The post France and India pledge to cooperate at UN climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Yann Forget/Flickr)

By Ed King

India faces isolation at UN climate change negotiations unless it relaxes its famously hardline attitude towards accepting greenhouse gas emission cuts.

That’s the view of Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for the environment between 2009-2011, and the man credited with transforming Delhi’s attitude to global warming during his time in office,

“In climate change, India now runs the risk of being very seriously isolated by China, Brazil and South Africa which make up the BASIC,” he told a meeting at the Observer Research Foundation think tank.

“India’s position in my view should be far more nuanced, far more proactive and flexible than has been the case.”

Environment chiefs from the BASIC countries are set to meet in New Delhi on August 7-8 to thrash out their collective position on addressing carbon pollution.

All four countries have seen huge increases in their greenhouse gas emissions linked to fast economic growth since 1990.

Traditionally the four emerging economies have formed a tight unit at UN talks, pushing back on demands from developed countries they cut spiralling levels of carbon pollution.

Report: China, India and Brazil could ‘derail’ UN climate deal

Citing the UN principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility, India has said its high levels of poverty and low development levels means it should do less than other more advanced states.

But Ramesh suggested new diplomatic moves by the US to engage China on climate change could alter that dynamic.

High pollution levels in major cities and an increasingly restless population could also change the thinking in Beijing, he said.

“China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and there is a name and shame in being the largest emitter and second, there is a larger constituency at home that is demanding cleaner water and air.

“They will play the multilateral card. They already have bilateral co-operation with the U.S. For example, the two countries have decided to work together on phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, which India has been reluctant to do.”

India’s government says it will play a more proactive role at the next round of UN talks, scheduled to take place in Lima this December.

Fears that the country’s aged energy infrastructure will slow economic growth, and that climate impacts could become more severe, are major concerns for policy makers.

Speaking this week Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the UN’s IPCC climate science panel, said the country urgently needed to invest in sustainable forms of low carbon energy.

“I am really concerned about the growing dependence of India on oil imports and the present situation in Iraq is adding to it,” he said.

“India has the largest number of people lacking access to electricity and clean cooking fuels in the world.”

Prime Minister Modi has targeted a ‘saffron’ energy revolution, using the country’s plentiful solar, hydro and wind resources, although critics are wary given his historical links to big oil.

According to a government report published in May, the country needs US$ 834 billion to place its economy on a low carbon trajectory by 2030, including a total overhaul of the electricity grid.

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Pic: Panoramas/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

India will take more of a leading role at UN climate negotiations from now, according to environment minister Prakash Javadekar.

He said that India would “reposition” itself within the negotiations, which are set to conclude next year in a global agreement to combat climate change.

“From 2020, the new protocol will start….We will strengthen our Climate Change negotiation team,” said the minister, who also runs the country’s information and broadcasting department.

He added that they would undertake intense “lobbying” for a “good strategic relationship” with other like-minded countries.  “We will do more meaningful representation in the world events,” he said.

Javadekar was speaking after a meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is orchestrating the 2015 Paris climate summit, where countries are scheduled to agree a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction deal.

This week France announced it would offer India €1 billion of credit for climate control projects.

New dawn

Greater engagement with the UN climate process from India could prove a boon to the talks.

The country is the third largest carbon polluter after China and the US, but has so far been reluctant to take on significant cuts to its emissions because it is a developing country, preferring countries with greater historical responsibility to take the lead.

Javadekar made his comments following an environment conference in Nairobi, where it was evident that India had become more willing to engage, said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

“It’s a good sign, to be positive about what they are doing and encouraging others to do more as well. I think that is better than simply blaming others.”

The conference was one of the first high-level events on climate change attended by India since Narendra Modi was elected in May.

Huq added that their attitude indicated the new government was ready to rise to the challenge of climate change.

Tough talks

India was not obliged to take any binding action to reduce emissions under the last major climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, and has so far lobbied for a similar approach to the new deal.

Other nations, including the US and the EU, say that this binary division should be cast out of the new agreement.

The UK’s special representative for climate change, Sir David King, warned that India’s approach to date was threatening to “derail” a climate deal, with no clear signal on whether they would be willing to sign.

Samit Aich, head of Greenpeace India, said that it was still “early days” for a government that has also shown its willingness to exploit its coal resources in order to lift the country out of poverty.

“The current government believes that delivering growth is a key priority. In order to do this, they are going to ramp up fossil fuel use – especially coal. This is basically equating development with a “right to pollute”. India needs to move beyond this old world view of development and create a new and bold pathway of sustainable growth.”

He added that the UN climate negotiations could be a “platform” for India to show new leadership in both demanding developed country action and offering their own solutions.

“Time is running out for the planet and this government is key in delivering a fair and ambitious outcome at Paris.”

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Violent clashes in Ukraine have made cooperation with Russia problematic  (Pic: Dmitry Vassilyev/Croix-Rouge d’Ukraine)

By Sophie Yeo in Bonn

Ukraine is no longer allowed to cooperate with Russia at the UN climate talks, ending one of the firmest bonds around the negotiating table. 

The crisis between the two former Soviet states broke out earlier this year, when Russia annexed Crimea in response to Ukraine’s decision to pursue a closer relationship with the EU.

Since then, Ukrainian negotiators have been forbidden from cooperating with Russia at international talks, where 195 countries are trying to reach a deal on climate change under the banner of the UN.

“This is the political process and we have political instructions not to cooperate with Russia in an official manner,” said Mykhailo Koval, who is director of the International Cooperation Division at Ukraine’s State Environmental Investment Agency, and a negotiator at the UN climate talks.

“We have an instruction not to allow Russia to represent Crimea as part of Russia.”

Crimean emissions

Russia and Ukraine have traditionally been close allies within the UN’s climate process, supporting each other over opposition to the Doha amendments to the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and a related dispute over UN procedure in June 2013.

This era of cooperation is now over, said Koval, replaced by the prospect of conflict between the two countries on how to count the emissions from Crimea, which both claim is now their territory.

To abide by UN rules, countries must provide ‘national inventories’ of the greenhouse gases emitted by their country.

If the problems between Russia and Ukraine are not resolved by 2016, said Koval, both nations could end up submitting inventories that include Crimea. In 2012, Crimea emitted around 2,757 tons of CO2 compared to 231,997 tons from the whole of Ukraine, according to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.

“At the moment, neither Ukraine nor Russia have any idea how to deal with the issue,” he said. “Probably this will be the question under some negotiation with Russia, but Russia is not ready to have any negotiation.”

He added that, logically, Ukraine should have no problems submitting an inventory including Crimea, since the UN itself does not recognise the outcome of Russia’s referendum in Crimea—“But there’s always a political issue and nobody knows what will happen.”

EU deal

If the Ukraine signs an economic association deal with the EU, it will be bound more closely to the 28-state bloc within UN climate negotiations, committing the regions to greater “cooperation at regional and international level … in the context of multilateral agreements such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, has indicated that he is willing to sign the economic deal imminently, after agreeing to greater political cooperation with the EU in March.

The EU has typically pushed for an ambitious approach to tackling climate change within the talks, and the Commission hopes that its 40% greenhouse gas reduction target will be confirmed by heads of states no later than October. It recently announced that it had overshot its 2020 target by 4.5%. 

An annex to the EU Association Agreement also says that Ukraine must implement the Kyoto Protocol and develop a long-term plan on how it will tackle its emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Unlike the EU, which is in the process of ratifying an extension to the Kyoto Protocol, Russia has refused to join in the with second phase of this deal on how to reduce pre-2020 emissions.

Russian diplomat Oleg Shamanov protests at 2012 Doha talks

Koval said that Ukraine is “definitely willing and totally ready to implement” the climate demands of the new EU agreement, which he believes will advance development in the country. “It means the energy efficiency and climate change policy in Ukraine will be totally changed,” he said.

“The Ukrainian people are willing to do it. The people made their choice and decided to go towards the European values. It could be funny but Ukrainians died for it. The situation would be a really dramatic change.”

Despite the political tension between the two nations, Koval stressed that he remained “good friends” with Russia’s representative, Oleg Shamanov, within the talks.

Several other negotiators confirmed to RTCC that the two were frequently spotted conversing over lunch and within the plenary hall at UN talks taking place in Bonn this week.

“Personal relations are not political relations, and he is not responsible for what Mr Putin is doing,” Koval added.

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Pic: UNFCCC

By Sophie Yeo

Progress at UN climate talks starting today in Bonn are “critical” to the progress on an international deal to stop global warming, according to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries.

During eleven days of negotiations ministers and negotiators will discuss a new climate change treaty, which will likely determine how the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions before and after 2020.

Nepali diplomat Prakash Mathema, who chairs the Least Developed Countries negotiating group, said that these discussions — the latest in a long series of conferences and meetings — are one of the final opportunities to draw up the draft text that will form the basis of discussion at the UN’s next major climate conference in Lima this December.

“Governments must make substantial progress in their talks in the period leading up to this date … We cannot be delayed by procedural discussions. We must put our heads together and start writing a new agreement,” he said.

But despite the importance of the meeting in the climate agenda, only 43 ministers from a possible 196 have committed to attend, with notable absences including the UK, Russia, Australia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Draft text

At the last round of talks in March, countries agreed to move into ‘contact groups’, which means that conversations can start to revolve around concrete suggestions for a text, rather than abstract discussions over its shape and content.

Since then, the co-chairs of the discussions have circulated a ‘multiple choice’ style document of all the suggestions put forward by parties so far. While this is likely to form a useful basis to this week’s discussions, the diversity of opinion it contains demonstrates just how much work remains to be done.

Many ideological differences still need to be smoothed out, particularly between the world’s two largest emitters: the US and China.

Signs of progress this week from both these countries—Obama’s new standards for coal-fired power plants and rumours of a Chinese cap on emissions—have been hailed as positive momentum for the talks.

4 once heading 2 Bonn w momentum building 4 climate action: US acts on power plants & China plans 4 emissions cap from 2016. Now where’s EU?

— Tim Gore (@tim_e_gore) June 3, 2014

Other developments in the climate change scene since the last round of discussions took place include important developments on the Green Climate Fund, which could see developed countries pledge large amounts of money by November.

It is still unclear whether precise financial pledges should form part of countries’ contributions towards a 2015 climate deal. That is likely to be a source of contention this week as nations wrangle over what information they will be obliged to include in their contributions, which must be submitted by March.

A forthcoming review of the current 2C target—the limit of global warming agreed upon by all governments—to assess whether it could be revised to 1.5C is also a likely topic of contention.

Analysis by the Climate Action Tracker, released today in Bonn, shows that all governments will need to increase their ambitions on climate change in order to stay below 2C, with the energy and industry sectors becoming zero carbon as early as 2045.

“One of the major challenges for Ministers at the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn is to take concrete steps to arrest and reverse this adverse trend in decarbonisation,” said Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, one of the groups involved in the research.

Science

The Least Developed Countries bloc and the Small Island States stand to lose most from the impacts of climate change. The latest round of talks will take place on the back of the latest report from the UN’s climate science panel, the IPCC.

This spelled out the impacts of climate change, and how the world can both adapt and mitigate.

“In light of the latest science and the worsening climate impacts unfolding before our eyes – including sea level rise, intensifying droughts and floods, as well as threats to our public health and food and water resources – it is apparent that immediate action immediate action is absolutely critical to Island Nations,” said Ambassador Marlene Moses, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

“Indeed, the latest IPCC Report also identifies numerous proven policy and technology solutions for rapidly and cost effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions, many of which bring significant economic and public health benefits.”

Alongside high level ministerial meetings, these technical options to combat climate change will also be discussed, including workshops on finance, land use and deforestation.

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(Pic: Ken Doerr/Flickr)

By Ed King

The EU has expressed concern that proposed carbon cuts ahead of a UN climate deal at the end of 2015 will be insufficient to prevent dangerous levels of warming.

In a proposal sent to the UN it wants an ‘international process’ to be set up to assess and respond to carbon reduction pledges from governments.

“Intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) alone will not be enough to achieve the below 2C objective,” says the EU.

It adds: “The EU expects all major and emerging economies, as well as other Parties that are ready, to also come forward in early 2015.”

The 2C ‘objective’ is a warming limit above pre-industrial levels that governments agreed to target in 2009. Rises beyond that threshold are judged to be increasingly dangerous, risking a number of tipping points, such as melting the Antarctic ice sheets.

The world’s leading greenhouse gas emitters are expected to outline how they will slash their emissions by the first quarter of next year.

These are expected to be the basis of a deal set to be signed off in Paris next December.

The EU’s 28 member states are likely to make a final decision on the bloc’s own climate targets in October. In January it released plans for a 40% carbon cut by 2030.

Comment: Why do this week’s talks in Bonn matter?

UN talks starting this week in Bonn are expected to explore how national proposals can be vetted by other countries and independent analysts.

Efforts to allow an independent panel to decide what level of cuts individual countries should make based on their historical emissions, GDP and current capabilities have been strongly resisted by major economies.

Current ‘pledges’ have left the planet on course to warm 3.7C by 2011, according to research from Climate Analytics, Ecofys and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

A submission from South Africa to the UN says developed countries should aim to ‘peak’ their emissions by 2015, with a long-term goal of zero emissions for each Party in 2050.

EU emissions have fallen steadily since 1990, but this is likely to be a contested proposal with the US, Canada, Japan and Australia all recording greenhouse gas emission rises in the past year.

The 54-strong Africa Group, which includes South Africa as well as the continent’s poorer states, wants emission cuts to be based on “a fair sharing of atmospheric space and resources.”

This would require even sharper carbon cuts from the developed world, which has used up the majority of what UN scientists call the world’s ‘carbon budget’.

Separately, a submission from Mexico suggests the legally binding aspects of any global climate deal could already be in place due to agreements made by countries at the UN.

The legal nature of the proposed Paris agreement is one of the most contentious issues, with leading economies like the US and China fiercely opposed to being bound by international law.

Mexico suggests some precedents may already have been set, negating the need for a new treaty.

“Instead of discussing in abstract what kind of instrument we want, we should start identifying and compiling what has actually happened through the various COPs,” the submission says.

“This is a task that a group of legal experts could do under the guidance of the co-chairs of the ADP.”

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By Ed King

New carbon cuts proposed by US President Obama could offer much-needed momentum to UN climate talks taking place in Bonn later this week.

That’s the view of the UN’s leading climate official, Christiana Figueres, who needs the world’s top economies on board for a global emissions reduction deal to work.

“The decision by President Obama to launch plans to more tightly regulate emissions from power plants will send a good signal to nations everywhere that one of the world’s biggest emitters is taking the future of the planet and its people seriously,” Figueres said.

“It is also a good signal for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September and towards securing a new and more importantly meaningful climate agreement by the UN convention meeting in Paris in late 2015”.

Reports from Washington overnight suggest the Environment Protection Agency will present plans to slash cut carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.

Around 1,600 power units are expected to be targeted under the laws, which could allow the US to make more ambitious carbon cutting promises ahead of any UN climate deal.

Washington is currently committed to cutting CO2 17% on 2005 levels by 2020, and has so far resisted all calls for it to adopt a higher target.

The laws could finally convince US critics that the world’s second largest carbon polluter is serious about curbing its emissions, and encourage China – now the world’s top emitter – to ramp up its own goals.

Figueres hopes a show of faith by the White House will allow Paris to succeed where previous treaties like the Kyoto Protocol failed by getting the world’s major economies to agree to binding targets.

“I fully expect action by the United States to spur others in taking concrete action—action that can set the stage and put in place the pathways that can bend the global emissions curve down in order to keep world-wide temperature rise under 2 degrees C this century”.

Countries meet in Bonn this week to start working on the text for the 2015 deal.

Time is running out, with a draft expected in time for a November meeting in Lima, and initial national ‘pledges’ on mitigation and adaptation goals set to be delivered in the first quarter of 2015.

Despite huge anticipation around the Obama announcement it is still not clear whether these Presidential decrees will be pushed through before he leaves office in 2016.

Many in US oppose any laws to restrict coal use – and are set to explore all legal and constitutional avenues to block progress – even though a UN panel of scientists says they are 95% certain climate change is caused by greenhouse gases.

Last week the influential US Chamber of Commerce warned new regulations could cost America’s economy over $50 billion a year between now and 2030, while the right-wing Cato thinktank has labelled them “futile” in addressing climate change and “politically costly”.

On Saturday Obama dismissed these concerns, pointing to the economic and health benefits of cleaner forms of energy, arguing his opponents were just interested in protecting their vested interests.

“They warned that doing something about the smog choking our cities, and acid rain poisoning our lakes, would kill business. It didn’t. Our air got cleaner, acid rain was cut dramatically, and our economy kept growing,” he said.

“The idea of setting higher standards to cut pollution at our power plants is not new. It’s just time for Washington to catch up with the rest of the country.”

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(Pic: Flickr/Mikigroup)

By Gerard Wynn

Countries must take account of new research showing higher long-term sea level rise than previously expected, when they set new carbon emissions targets, a negotiating bloc of small island states said.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) was commenting ahead of the next round of UN climate talks, from June 4-15, which are meant to lay the groundwork for a global deal next year.

The focus of a new deal will include a new round of carbon emissions targets from 2020-2030.

World leaders will also decide whether a present agreement that warming should not exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels is ambitious enough.

They will base that decision on a present expert review of the goal, called a “structured expert dialogue”, timed to coincide with the publication of a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which found that the evidence for climate change was stronger than ever.

Countries will decide, for example, whether the goal should be strengthened, to limit global average warming to 1.5C.

In their submission to next week’s talks, AOSIS listed a number of reasons why the world should limit warming to 1.5C, including to slow sea level rise and ocean acidification and to protect coral reefs.

“The difference between impacts of … a long term temperature increase of 1.5 degrees above pre‐industrial levels and … 2 degrees Celsius is enormous, in terms of the additional burden such added impacts would imply,” they said.

They quoted the recent IPCC report, and research published last year which said that sea levels would rise by 2.3 metres for every 1C rise in temperatures in the long term, implying a serious impact on low-lying islands from sustained 2C warming over millennia.

And they quoted recent research, published in March in the journal Environmental Research Letters, which showed that a third or more of the territory of many small island states would be underwater after sustained 2C warming over two millennia.

Review

Some scientists say that a 1.5C warming threshold is already out of reach, given 0.8 degrees warming has already taken place, and there is inertia where the Earth is still warming in response to greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Additional warming is also expected as countries reduce local air pollution which presently reflects light back into space.

The United States and the European Union have already said that the IPCC report should be a key input in the review, without suggesting that the 2C target should be strengthened.

In other submissions ahead of the Bonn talks, Mexico said that a new climate agreement could be a legally binding decision under the existing 1992 Convention on Climate Change.

That would avoid writing a new treaty or protocol, enabling countries to sidestep the need for ratification of a deal by national parliaments. US ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol foundered in Congress, where it was roundly defeated.

Countries might agree a new annex under the existing Convention, for example, which included carbon emissions targets and could be updated from time to time according to the latest science on the urgency to tackle the climate problem.

“Mexico proposes to entrust a group of legal experts to draw a list of instruments that … work without being subject to the rigorous process of amendments that require parliamentary approval, such as in the areas of trade law, certain environmental agreements, and illicit drugs,” it said in its submission.

“One alternative could be annexes that can be updated on a regular basis.”

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(Pic: UNFCCC/Flickr)

By Gerard Wynn in Bonn

Ambitious action under a new global climate deal will cut the cost of reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this century, said the UN official responsible for driving the negotiations.

The United Nations is gearing up for a climate deal to be agreed next year, which will set ambition for emissions cuts from 2020 to 2030.

Global net greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall to zero by the end of the century, to keep average surface warming below 2C, found a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published last month.

Cutting emissions faster in the 2020s would reduce the cost of that challenging task, the IPCC showed.

That is because human activities cause greenhouse gases to accumulate in the atmosphere, requiring ever steeper emissions cuts to limit the total amount of warming they cause.

The only economic way presently to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is to expand the area of vegetation including forests, which can mop up CO2, but space constraints limit such potential, throwing the emphasis on cutting emissions.

“You will come to the point this century when you have to take out as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as you put in,” said Halldor Thorgeirsson, director for implementation strategy at the secretariat of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC).

“We’re not talking about minor adjustments (in emissions) but transformation. The sooner you start the more economic it will be.”

Countries have agreed the 2C warming target as a threshold for more dangerous climate change.

Clear opportunity

The IPCC publishes an update on the science of climate change every six years, and last month reported that carbon emissions would have to fall to zero – or even below, meaning a net absorption by forests – by the end of this century.

Less ambitious action now would make that task even more difficult.

“Scenarios consistent with a likely chance to keep temperature change below 2C … are characterized by lower global greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 than in 2010 … and emissions levels near zero or below in 2100,” the IPCC report said.

“Delaying mitigation efforts … through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer-term emissions levels and narrow the range of options consistent with maintaining temperature change below 2C relative to pre-industrial levels.”

The IPCC report concluded that emissions of all greenhouse gases, including CO2, methane and others, should not exceed 50 billion tonnes in 2030, to have a “cost effective” chance of staying within the 2C warming limit.

But such emissions are already above 50 billion tonnes, given that they reached 49 billion tonnes in 2010, according to the IPCC, and have since continued to rise.

Annual global emissions must therefore fall over the next 15 years, even as India and China continue to grow their economies in part by burning fossil fuels, underlining the scale of the challenge.

The IPCC report showed that if greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 50 billion tonnes in 2030, the world subsequently would have to cut these by around 5-6 percent annually to stay on a 2C track.

In the teeth of the financial crisis when the global economy contracted in 2009, annual emissions only fell by a little over 1 percent, showing the importance of agreeing ambitious carbon cuts sooner than later, to avoid a more costly reckoning in future decades.

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(Pic: UNFCCC)

By Ed King

Only 43 of a possible 196 government ministers are currently scheduled to attend a special ‘high level’ session at the next round of UN climate change negotiations, aimed at boosting carbon cutting measures in the next seven years.

Hosted by Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal, who will be President of the 2014 UN climate summit, the June meeting in Bonn is billed as an important step towards a proposed global climate deal in 2015.

China, the US, France and the EU are all billed to attend, but there appear to be no representatives from some of the world’s largest carbon polluters such as the UK, Russia, Australia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Armenia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Sudan, Luxembourg and the Marshall Islands are among the smaller nations sending delegations.

Unlike the previous round of talks in March, countries have been specifically requested to send a minister to the upcoming talks next month.  A poor show at the meeting will raise questions over how engaged many countries are in the UN process, which aims to deliver a draft text for the global deal by November.

So far only a few heads of state have confirmed they will attend Ban Ki-moon’s ‘leader’s summit’ on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, although it would be a shock if many shun the event.

Most parties to the UN will send negotiating teams to the Bonn talks, which last for around two weeks, and are seen as a significant stepping stone towards the Lima summit in December.

Momentum

According to the agenda, attending ministers will be expected to explain how they plan to boost their climate ambition ahead of 2020, and offer ‘political direction’ to negotiators drafting the text.

Questions they are invited to answer include:

– What political actions are being taken and what further actions will be needed to ensure full implementation of pledges made and the unlocking of untapped mitigation potential in the period up to 2020?

– What political implications of the IPCC findings do ministers see for the recommended aggregate level of ambition on mitigation and adaptation and on finance, technology and capacity-building support to developing countries?

– What political steps are ministers initiating in order to arrive at ambitious nationally determined contributions?

– How can international cooperation help to enable and accelerate domestic efforts? How does this impact the shape and content of the 2015 agreement? What should be its key features?

So far only the EU has given a clear indication of the levels of emission cuts it is willing to consider beyond 2020, with a 40% GHG reduction goal for 2030.

The US and China, the world’s largest carbon emitters, are expected to reveal their contributions in the first quarter of 2015, which may prompt other countries to follow suit.

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Talks in Peru’s capital Lima are expected to deliver a draft text for a global climate change deal (Pic: Geraint Rowland/Flickr)

By Guy Edwards and Jakob Skovgaard

Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN body on climate change, visited Lima last week as Peru prepares to host the annual UN climate talks in December.

Figueres was vocal in her comments that the Lima conference needs to secure a draft agreement before the deadline summit in Paris next year to create a new climate agreement.

The chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change commented that government efforts to confront climate change are woefully inadequate.

She also cited recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which affirms that the window of opportunity to keep global temperature within 2C and avoid dangerous climate impacts is rapidly closing.

This reminds us of the relentless pressure facing presidents of the annual UN climate Conference of the Parties (COP).

COP presidents walk a tightrope as they attempt to shepherd over 190 countries of the UN Climate Change Convention towards the pen of progress.

They are frequently criticized for doing too much or too little. Peru as host of the twentieth COP or “COP20” is attempting to pull off an extraordinarily difficult balancing act.

The warm-up

With a vast gulf between country positions and with trust so low, achieving an ambitious and equitable climate agreement acceptable to all countries has proven elusive for decades.

However, decisive leadership by a COP president can secure the support of enough countries to build progress.

The role of successful COP presidents focuses on setting the level of expectations for the conference, successfully facilitating the process, demonstrating strong domestic climate action, and being a good host.

An essential starting point is setting the level of expectations for the COP.

Peru is cautiously vocal that Lima should produce a draft agreement for the text. COP20 President and Peruvian Minister of the Environment Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said at a Brown University conference that COP20 needs to provide a solid basis for a strong agreement in Paris.

High poverty levels and reliance on natural resources mean Peru is acutely vulnerable to climate change (Pic: Geraint Rowland/Flickr)

Yet he warned against viewing the next two years of negotiations as a final push, rather than the beginning of a new chapter in global climate cooperation.
Raising the bar of expectation for the COP too high can prove disastrous.

Prior to the COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, expectations were unachievably high which led in part to the unravelling of the process and the bitter ending.

Although Peru promotes has high expectations, circumstances also play a role.

The alarming findings of the IPCC reports, the 2015 deadline, and Peru’s acute vulnerability to climate impacts is helping to persuade Peru to take a big gamble.

This increases the risk of COP20, however, being perceived as a failure if it cannot deliver.

Conveniently, climate change presents a useful legacy issue for the Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, who is constitutionally barred from re-election in 2016.

The participation of president Humala at the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s Leaders’ Summit on climate change in New York this September will be an important indicator of how seriously the Humala administration is taking COP20.

Orchestrating the big show

The COP president facilitates the negotiation process before and during the COP which usually falls into two categories: a bold or reluctant approach.

Reluctant facilitators take a backseat and emphasize that the process is “party-driven” and inclusive to all countries.

A bold facilitator publically recognizes that all countries need a seat at the table but acts assertively in addressing tough issues and finding compromises and solutions on the negotiating texts.

This approach may focus on informal consultations between smaller groups of countries and the COP president – an approach which worked well for Mexico in 2010 at COP16.

Trust-building is essential to this facilitator role. COP presidents must reach out to the largest emitters, the least developed or most vulnerable countries and those which are either in favour or against a legally binding agreement for all countries.

The support of these game-changers is required if the negotiations go down to the wire and Peru needs to deal with dissenting countries blocking progress.

Peru is using COP20 to bolster its own domestic climate action which in turn reinforces the credibility of its presidency.

In 2008, Peru announced an impressive voluntary emission reduction pledge by offering to reduce to zero the net deforestation of primary forests by 2021.

However, the implementation of its climate policies remains a challenge due to substantial oil and gas concessions in the Amazon.

Huge swathes of the Amazon are under threat from logging and mining operations (Pic: Fabiola Ortiz)

With negotiators – especially from developing countries with smaller delegations – surviving on unhealthily low levels of sleep during the conference, putting on a well-managed event is essential.

A logistically sound and cleverly choreographed COP is crucial as exhaustion and fraying tempers inevitably kick-in.

Peru’s careful yet laudable gamble of raising expectations stems from the urgency at the global level, its strong domestic climate agenda and its concern about Peru’s vulnerability to climate impacts.

With seven months remaining before COP20, Peru’s top challenges will be to boldly facilitate the process and ensure a well-managed conference.

Peru’s COP20 slogan says: “Don’t come to Peru if you don’t want to change the world”. Only by achieving a great diplomatic feat, can Peru bring about that change and cross the tightrope.

Guy Edwards is research fellow and co-director of the Climate and Development Lab at the Center for Environmental Studies, Brown University. Jakob Skovgaard is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Lund University. The opinions in this article are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the views of Brown University or Lund University.

The post Can Peru deliver a successful UN climate summit? appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: UNFCCC)

By Gerard Wynn

Wide, long-standing differences remain among national proposals from the world’s biggest carbon emitters for a global climate deal meant to be agreed next year.

Countries have committed to agree a deal in Paris in 2015 which cuts carbon emissions and prepares for unavoidable climate change, for implementation from 2020.

The scale of remaining differences shows that countries may fall short of a comprehensive deal, as they did five years ago at a UN conference in Copenhagen.

The alternative, as emerged in Copenhagen, would be a deal based on voluntary pledges with no overarching global targets, and international rules to be resolved in subsequent years, if at all.

Proposals submitted in the past three months by the United States, China, the European Union and Russia show how countries are split on the level of ambition of carbon cuts.

Equally significantly, a long-standing disagreement remains over how to divide effort between developed and developing countries, a flashpoint whose impact should not be under-estimated.

In a related source of suspicion and rhetoric, countries are divided on whether developed economies could source financial aid for poorer nations from the private or public sector, and whether they should also supply low carbon technology assistance.

Positions

Countries are presently adopting familiar negotiating positions and roles.

China has adopted its default position that the legal roles of developed and developing countries should remain systematically differentiated, as in the 1992 Climate Change Convention treaty, where every aspect of a deal would refer to an annex listing two separate lists of countries.

“The 2015 agreement shall be based and built on the structure and provisions of the Convention … the differentiation between developed and developing country Parties, with developed country Parties taking the lead,” the Chinese submission said.

“The Annexes of the Convention shall continue to be relevant and applicable.”

An agreement would specify greater effort for developed countries in every department, including ambition of carbon cuts, supply of finance, the sharing of low carbon technology and the transparent publication of information on actions taken.

China’s position is robustly supported by other developing countries, including a group calling itself the “Like-minded developing countries in climate change”, and which includes China, India and Saudi Arabia among others.

The United States has emphasised that it will not accept a deal which rigidly differentiates between the obligations of rapidly emerging and industrialised economies.

“We would not support a bifurcated approach to the new agreement, particularly one based on groupings that may have made sense in 1992 but that are clearly not rational or workable in the post‐2020 era,” it said.

Climate change is one of the few remaining policy arenas where Russia and the United States agree. Both countries state that developing countries may have less onerous commitments, depending on their national wealth, but that their legal participation should be the same.

The European Union is emerging as the most ambitious, conciliatory developed country party, and seems likely to take a familiar role cajoling other industrialised nations including the United States, Canada, Russia and Japan to do more.

The EU also insists, however, that all countries, including developing nations, “have legally binding mitigation commitments”.

Flashpoints

The formal division of responsibilities between emerging and industrialised economies is the main flashpoint: it is written through developing country proposals, and flatly rejected by the United States and Russia.

A related issue is how far developed countries should provide aid for developing nations to cut carbon emissions and prepare for unavoidable climate change.

For example, China said this should be public funding, which is considered more reliable than private sector finance.

“Developed countries (are) to provide new, additional, adequate, predictable and sustained public funds to support developing country Parties in the post-2020 period to meet the agreed full costs or incremental costs of the preparation and implementation of their enhanced action,” it said.

The United States ruled out the supply solely of public money, referring to an agreement in Copenhagen in 2009 for developed countries to help raise $100 billion annually by 2020.

“The Copenhagen goal  acknowledges  the  role  of  private  sector  finance  by  calling  for mobilization, rather than provision, of funds.”

Another flashpoint is ambition.

In 2010, countries agreed at a climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, to a long-term global goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which limited global average warming to below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Among the main submissions so far, only the EU explicitly mentioned the 2C target (10 times in its brief proposal).

The United States and China did not include the target in their essential elements for a 2015 deal. Russia appeared to pull back, saying that a 2C target should not be used to define national carbon emissions targets.

A third flashpoint is the eventual legal strength of the agreement. The EU said it should be a formal protocol under the 1992 Convention. The United States and China said this should be left to negotiators.

Outlook

The division of responsibilities between developed and developing countries has sucked negotiating time from hammering out technical details of an agreement, such as accounting methods for measuring greenhouse gas emissions.

That, in turn, may leave national leaders with too little time and substance to agree a hugely complicated international agreement, as emerged in Copenhagen.

The split is also fundamental to the technical detail, since it concerns the carbon emissions commitments of individual countries.

On the positive side, developed countries certainly accept that they may take on more ambitious commitments.

What is left to agree is how developed and developing countries are referred to in an agreement, for example whether a formal division into two categories is acceptable, as seems unlikely, to countries including the United States and Russia.

Even if that issue is resolved, then the remaining problems including the legal form and ambition of an agreement loom large, however.

As the EU said: “With less than two years to secure an ambitious 2015 Agreement at (the conference) in Paris, the work that lies before us is challenging.”

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