Veteran climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana is in contention to be France’s new prime minister, with three left-wing parties backing her as a compromise candidate following inconclusive legislative elections. But infighting among the leftist political coalition that won the most seats means she has yet to be confirmed as its official choice.

France’s Green Party (EELV), Socialist Party (PS) and Communist Party (PCF) have proposed Tubiana – a key figure in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change – for the leadership role, representing the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition of left-wing parties. She has no formal political affiliation.

The head of the PS, Olivier Faure, said Tubiana “completely corresponds to what we are promoting”, praising her as the “architect of COP21 [where the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015], commissioner for the climate convention, economist and diplomat engaged in both the environmental and social fields”.

But the biggest member of the NFP alliance, hard-left party France Unbowed (La France insoumise, LFI), is opposed to Tubiana getting the job, as they fear she is too close to the current President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist Renaissance party. “If this is the profile our partners are working on, I’ll fall off my chair,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on Tuesday, adding the suggestion was “not serious”.

In the July 7 elections, which resulted in a surprise defeat for the far right, no block won a majority of seats in the French legislature, known as the National Assembly. Of the 577 seats, the NFP left-wing alliance won 182, President Macron’s centrist party 168 and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) 143.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although he will lead a caretaker government with a limited mandate until a new government is named.

The choice of the new prime minister is ultimately up to President Macron, but in order to govern, the PM must have the support of a majority of National Assembly deputies.

The left-wing parties have been searching for a joint candidate and, after the LFI’s suggestion of Huguette Bello was rejected by the Socialists, Tubiana’s name was put forward. Faure said Tubiana had been consulted before the suggestion was made.

UK court ruling provides ammo for anti-fossil fuel lawyers worldwide

Tubiana, he said, is “someone who has strong convictions, who has never compromised. She has always been on that side [the left], she has never deviated. This is a demonstration of her ability to stand her ground.”

But according to French newspaper Le Monde, the LFI suspects she is too close to Macron. He twice offered her the job of ecological transition minister, which she declined, and she recently co-signed an editorial calling for the the left-wing block to reach out to Macron’s centrist party in order to govern.

Climate pedigree

Tubiana started out at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research before setting up and leading an NGO working on food security and the global environment called Solagral through the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1997, then French President Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party appointed her as his environmental advisor until he stepped down in 2022.

Tubiana next founded an influential French think-tank called the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) before re-entering government as France’s lead negotiator in the run up to COP21, at which the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

Since then, she has been an official United Nations champion on climate action, as well as president and CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), which funds green think-tanks and media outlets including Climate Home News.

Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation

In these roles, she has pushed for governments at UN climate summits to agree to phase out fossil fuels, and called carbon capture and storage a false solution to the fossil fuel industries’ emissions.

In 2018, Macron appointed her as a member of France’s official climate advisory body, the High Council on Climate Change.

The ECF has recently worked alongside the French and Kenyan governments looking into global green taxes that could fund climate action.

Laurence Tubiana (left) celebrates the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (credit: IISD.ca/Kiara Worth)

Environmental lawyer Arnaud Gossement said Tubiana’s appointment as France’s prime minister would be “a really good idea” as she is “a recognised climate specialist”.

Florence Faucher, professor of political science at French university Sciences Po, told Climate Home that Tubiana’s appointment “would certainly be interesting” but “I really doubt it [will happen]”.

The leftist coalition has said it hopes to find agreement on a candidate soon, with the new National Assembly set to meet for the first time on Thursday. One way the matter could be settled is by holding a vote among the new left-wing deputies.

On Wednesday morning, EELV deputy Sandrine Rousseau told French TV: “The discussions are not over – we will find a solution.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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Eight years after the Paris climate agreement was created, its Implementation and Compliance Committee (Paicc) issued its first reprimands this week.

Committee co-chair Christina Voigt said that two governments had been told that they were in breach of legally-binding aspects of the agreement and asked to explain themselves.

Today, the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) has – for the first time – notified two Parties of the initiation of consideration of issues, regarding Art. 4(2) and Art. 9(5) Paris Agreement, respectively.

With this, PAICC has become operational.

— Christina Voigt (@ChristinaVoigt2) May 9, 2023

No plan Vatican

Voigt would not tell Climate Home which governments were involved. She said one government failed to submit a climate plan and one failed to tell the United Nations what level of climate finance it expects to provide.

The Vatican City, the micro-state in Rome where the Pope lives, is the only government that has ratified the Paris Agreement but not submitted a climate plan, known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC).

It has a population of just 825 and only ratified the agreement in September 2022. Voigt told Climate Home the government the committee warned had joined the Paris Agreement “recently”.

Finance flows

The other reprimand was for breaching the Paris Agreement’s climate finance requirement. Developed countries need to tell the United Nations every two years how much money they expect to give developing countries to help them tackle and adapt to the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement has no list of which countries are considered developed and Voigt said that had been a “difficult question” which “the committee had to get their 24 heads around”.

Nations split over fossil fuels and carbon capture

Governments that could be considered developed but which have not submitted this document, known as an article 9.5 communication, include Turkiye, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Turkiye has fiercely resisted being grouped together with rich nations in climate talks, a classification which implies governments should give and not receive climate finance.

Its government refused to ratify the Paris Agreement until 2021 over concerns it would be considered developed and only signed it specifying that it would implement it “as a developing country”.

The committee’s members represent different regional groups

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are classified with other former Soviet Union countries as “economies in transition” in the UN climate rule-book which was drawn up at the first climate talks in 1992.

Wealthy countries like South Korea, Qatar and Israel were not listed as developed in this 1992 classification, which remains influential in UN climate diplomacy.

Compliance matters

Most provisions of the Paris Agreement are voluntary. But Voigt said it was important that the few legally-binding aspects were complied with as the agreement is the “minimum global consensus of what parties are supposed to do”.

She said that submitting NDC climate plans exerts “peer pressure to push up ambition to where is needed in order to address the climate crisis”.

Europe’s push for global renewables target gains support

Governments must predict their climate finance, she said, because many developing countries plans are conditional on the level of climate finance they will receive so they need to know in order to “adjust their level of ambition”.

The committee has written to the two governments. Voigt expects to have a dialogue where the governments set out what they’re going to do to comply and for the situation to be “easily remedied”.

The names of the two governments may be revealed in late September or early October, she said, when the committee issues a regular report.

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This health check is known as the global stocktake and work toward it began at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021.

After a lot of hard work, it now entering the home stretch before taking centre stage when governments gather at the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai.

It will tell us whether enough is being done on cutting emissions, adapting to climate change, funding climate action and rolling-out technology.

The answer is widely expected to be a resounding ‘no’. But observers hope the latest wake-up call will prompt countries to correct course and raise their efforts.

For Simon Stiell, the head of the UN’s climate change arm, the stocktake will be a moment of truth. “It must tell us where we are, where we need to go, and how we’ll get there”, he said.

A two-year process

Its final report will be the culmination of an extensive two-year process. Thousands of documents have been analysed and distilled through hundreds of hours of discussions.

Analysts don’t expect the stocktake to  say anything particularly new. Report after report has already said the world is falling short.

But its findings will form the basis of the discussions at Cop28. Political leaders will reflect on them and may come up with a plan to fix their shortcomings.

German official sees ‘a chance’ Cop28 can agree to phase out fossil fuels

Tom Evans, climate diplomacy analyst at E3G, hopes the stocktake will be “a launchpad for action going forward”.

The Stockholm Environment Institue’s Richard Klein, who is involved in the process, says there is lots of curiosity about how countries will react. “Are they going to commit to greater ambition or simply express concern once again?” he asked

Why a stocktake?

The stocktake is the central tool of the Paris Agreement to hold countries accountable for their collective efforts to achieve the targets they set themselves in 2015.

It tracks progress made on the pact’s three pillars: cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C; strengthen resilience to climate impacts; and provide the necessary financial and technological means to make this happen.

UN: World set to blow through 1.5C carbon budget in 10 years

The stocktake is a core component of the so-called ‘ratchet mechanism’ built into the agreement.

It was clear from the outset that initial climate pledges would not be sufficient to meet the goals set in Paris. So the agreement encourages countries to raise their ambitions over time.

A virtuous circle

Carried out every five years from 2023, the stocktake is meant to guide countries as they update and enhance their pledges to bring them in line with the agreement.

At the heart of the exercise are the Nationally determined contributions (NDCs): each country’s individual strategy to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The process should create a virtuous circle. The collective analysis of all NDCs submitted by the 193 countries which signed the Paris agreement forms the basis for the stocktake’s findings. These will in turn inform the drafting of new and more robust NDCs.

The two-year stocktake is divided into three phases: the collection of source material; the technical assessment; the consideration of its output at a political level.

The first two phases – which overlap – are soon drawing to a close.

Information gathering

The volume of the material inputted into the exercise is massive. Countries and non-state actors have submitted thousands of documents.

The bulk of it is made up of the signatories’ NDCs, national adaptation plans, finance reports and technology needs assessments.

Add to this the IPCC scientific reports, technical analysis prepared by the UN climate change Secretariat and a long list of disparate contributions by NGOs.

Reporting on climate adaptation is a mess – here’s how to fix it

“Just considering the adaptation chapter, if we put together what countries have written over the past few years it adds up to 18,000 pages,” says Richard Klein. “No one is going to be able to read all of that.”

The UN climate change secretariat has a coordinating role in sifting through the vast mass of information and preparing briefings and synthesis reports.

Technical analysis

This material is then analysed and discussed during the technical assessment. This second phase of the stocktake will have lasted for one year when it formally ends at the annual Bonn climate talks in June.

The assessment culminates in a series of in-person meetings of country delegates and experts in an ‘open and transparent’ process. After reviewing the inputs, they are expected to come up with the key takeaways on the collective efforts to uphold the Paris Agreement.

Contributions to a Global Stocktake discussion are recorded on a flip chart. Photo: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

Each meeting produces a summary report which captures the nature of the discussions and gives hints on what the final stocktake will feature.

E3G’s Tom Evans says the assessment is already clear. “We’re not making progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement fast enough. We’re way off track across almost everything”, he added.

“Inadequate progress”

The latest summary report – published last month – does indeed say there has been “significant yet inadequate collective progress”. On both the cutting emissions and adaptating fronts, it says not only that the current plans are insufficient. But there are even problems in translating this inadequate ambition into real action, the so-called implementation gap.

After the final technical dialogue in June, the stocktake will enter its final, and most crucial, phase.

The recommendations featured in the final synthesis report will take center stage at Cop28 in Dubai. Here the technicians will hand the baton to the politicians. The goal is to ensure this lengthy exercise has a tangible real-world impact.

Enter the politicians

Leaders will kick off negotiations which should lead to a series of key political messages being featured in the Cop’s declaration. These will provide the guidance countries should follow to update their national plans.

“Every group and every country will have its own priorities and pet issues they would like to see reflected in the decision,” says Richard Klein. “They will all have their red lines.”

Despite Taiwan and spy balloon tensions, China invites US for climate talks

Tom Evans says ultimately some “champions” will need to step forward and broker an ambitious deal.

This could be the UAE Presidency, which is keen to have a breakthrough moment in Dubai. Despite its reliance on fossil fuels, the country seems to be warming to the idea of a fossil fuel phase out.

Governments failed to agree on that wording at last year’s summit, as fossil fuel producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran were opposed.

That language’s inclusion at Cop28 will give a strong sense of direction, particularly if the words “unabated”, which means without carbon capture technology, are not added.

But, ultimately, the success or failure of the stocktake will become evident in 2025 by which time governments are supposed to have released their next batch of NDCs.

Only then we will be able to see if countries have raised their game to finally deliver the Paris Agreement.

The post What is the global stocktake of climate action and why does it matter? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The South American country of 212 million —and the world’s sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter— is headed to a second electoral round 30 October. In the running are incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who led the first round of voting with 48.4% of the votes.

Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s former environment minister under Lula and head of his environment team, promised to update country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, which outlines its plans to cut emissions.

“It is evident that Brazil’s numbers today are insufficient. These will be reviewed and Brazil’s NDC will once again become an instrument for the country’s credibility for Brazilians and the international community. Brazil needs a new NDC,” she said.

Independent analysts at Climate Action Tracker rate Brazil’s latest 2030 emissions target as “almost sufficient” to hold global temperature rise below 2C. But policy action was “insufficient” to deliver, they judged, citing rising deforestation and an expanded role for fossil oil and gas in energy plans.

As Brazil’s Congress swings further right, environmentalists pin hopes on Lula

In the lead up to the election, climate activists pushed for Lula’s campaign to update Brazil’s NDC in the first 100 days of government. Teixeira declined to commit to such a deadline.

The next government first needs to revisit the technical studies that form the basis for targets in the context of development goals, she said. “We need to understand what is on the table, understand what society wants, (aim to) make a big pact, because the private sector has advanced, the financial sector has advanced.”

There is insufficient data to understand the “industrial transition” and role of Brazil’s voluntary carbon market, Teixeira added. “We can’t be irresponsible, say that we have renegotiated and delivered anything. I built the most ambitious NDC that Brazil has ever done, in 2015, and it took a year.”

If Lula wins the presidential election, he faces the challenge of rebuilding Brazil’s environmental image while working with a Congress that has swung further to the right.

Brazil proposed its first NDC in September 2015 and has updated it twice since, in 2020 and in 2022. In both updates, made under Bolsonaro’s term as president, the country used accounting tricks to weaken its climate goals.

Gap to 1.5C yawns, as most governments miss UN deadline to improve climate plans

In 2020, the country committed to a 37% emission reduction by 2025 and 43% by 2030, but changed the baseline year for the calculation. This allowed for more emissions than the previous version, violating the Paris Agreement. 

After pressure from civil society and the international community, Brazil updated its NDC in April 2022, but it still allows the emission of 73 MtCO2e more than what was first proposed in 2015. 

The revision of the NDC is one of the proposals listed in the document Brazil 2045, presented in May this year by the Climate Observatory, a network of 73 civil society organizations, for the country to go beyond carbon neutrality in 2050.

The document was delivered to all candidates except to the current president Jair Bolsonaro. For the organization, “with Bolsonaro there is no future for environmental policy in Brazil”.

Revisiting the country’s current target is a fundamental step for Brazil to rebuild trust with the international community, said Stela Herschmann, climate policy expert at the Climate Observatory. This alone is not enough, she added, as the goal must align with scientific evidence. 

“We need to present an implementation strategy, which we don’t have today. We don’t say how we are going to reach the number. We also need a long-term goal, we need to talk about adaptation and make sure that the NDC allows effective public participation”, he says.

Comment: The fate of the Amazon rests on the outcome of Brazil’s election

According to Teixeira, Lula’s priority is to curb deforestation, the country’s main source of emissions, which has surged to a decade high under Bolsonaro. 

In the last four years, deforestation in the Amazon increased by more than 50% and forest fires in the region have also increased. Environmental crimes are on the rise, including the illegal occupation of land in protected areas, invasions of indigenous territories and the assassination of indigenous leaders.

During the years 2020 and 2021, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 9.5%. Of all emissions, 46% are due to deforestation, mainly driven by illegal mining and livestock expansion. 

Preliminary reports indicate that in 2022 deforestation will reach record levels in the Amazon region.

“Combating deforestation is an ethical question… It is not an economic activity, it is one of control and inspection. We will do this and, at the same time, design mitigation and resilience strategies,” said the former minister. 

Tackling deforestation is Brazil’s “greatest challenge” but also “its greatest opportunity”, said Herschmann. “We have a competitive advantage, a gigantic forest, and we can invest in reforestation to increase carbon reabsorption.”

The post Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor appeared first on Climate Home News.

On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order notifying the UN that the US was rejoining the Paris Agreement. Now that order has taken effect, the US is expected to submit a new national contribution to the agreement, setting out an emissions target for 2030.

“It’s good to have the US back in the Paris Agreement, but sadly we have no time to celebrate. The climate crisis is deepening and this is the year we need all major polluters to step up and deliver stronger plans to deliver a safe, clean and prosperous future for everyone,” said Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation.

“The US needs to come to Cop26 [climate talks] with a strong commitment: the urgency of the crisis is clear, and this means a new US target of at least 50% GHG cuts on 2005 levels by 2030, ideally more,” Tubiana said.

Richard Black, head of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said the US was “back in the game like a linebacker after a time-out – sleeves rolled up, game face on, getting down to business”.

A series of net zero pledges and upgraded 2030 emissions targets from major polluters – including China, Japan and the EU – last year has put pressure on the US to catch up.

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The US is expected to announce its updated 2030 target ahead of a major economies climate summit which Biden will host on Earth Day, 22 April.

Climate Action Tracker previously told Climate Home that the US should reduce its emissions by at least 52% by 2030 through domestic action. Under Obama, the US committed to reducing emissions by 26-28% by 2025, compared to 2005 levels – a target which it is not on track to meet. 

Tim Gore, head of the climate programme at The Institute for European Environmental Policy, said that the average US citizen has a carbon footprint ten times higher than the global emissions per capita needed to limit global warming to 1.5C. A 50% reduction by 2030 would not bring US per capita emissions down to EU levels today, he said. 

US 2030 target must show a major increase in ambition

–> to converge on global per capita target needed for 1.5C in 2030, US emissions must fall c.85% below 2005

–> a 50% cut would not even bring US per cap emissions to the EU average today

More here: https://t.co/xpkFZVLfHm https://t.co/7TbCLDMtnF pic.twitter.com/GOLTFanBdo

— Tim Gore (@tim_e_gore) January 22, 2021

195 climate groups signed a petition this week calling on Biden to ensure that the US contributes its “fair share” to limiting global warming to 1.5C, the toughest target in the Paris Agreement. 

US Climate Action Network is calling on the US to reduce its emissions by 195% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. At least 70% should be delivered domestically and the rest by helping developing countries to cut carbon faster, the campaign network said.

“Rejoining the Paris Agreement is the right move for the United States, but it’s just the easy first step. President Biden must follow through on his commitment to do more by centering environmental justice in his approach to the climate crisis globally,” said Karen Orenstein, climate and energy director at climate group Friends of the Earth. 

“This includes the United States doing its fair share to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C and providing climate finance for developing countries in line with science, equity, and justice,” said Orenstein.

DR Congo campaigners take minister to court over illegal logging rights claims

This month US climate campaigners urged the Biden administration to commit $8 billion to the Green Climate Fund – the financing body created by the UN to help poor countries that are not historically responsible for causing the climate crisis develop sustainably and cope with climate impacts.

In a letter delivered to the White House campaigners wrote: “As the world’s largest historical greenhouse gas emitter, it is both a legal obligation and a moral imperative for the United States to provide finance for developing countries.”

The call came after presidential climate envoy John Kerry said the US would “significantly increase” funding for climate adaptation. 

“There is simply no adapting to a 3 or 4C world, except for the very richest and most privileged,” he said at the first global climate adaptation summit. 

The post As US formally rejoins the Paris Agreement, eyes turn to 2030 emissions goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

In February, campaigners claimed a historic victory in the Court of Appeal, which quashed plans for a third runway at Heathrow on climate grounds. The case was brought by litigation charity Plan B and campaign group Friends of the Earth.

Three appeal judges ruled that government approval of the expansion plan was unlawful because, among other reasons, it failed to consider the Paris Agreement on climate change. To pursue the project, the transport secretary would have to review how it could fit with the country’s climate commitments. The transport department accepted the ruling and said it would not appeal.

In a two-day virtual sitting of the Supreme Court this week, Heathrow argued the government was not legally required to consider the Paris Agreement.

At the same time, the airport owners claimed a third runway was compatible with Paris, so a government review would ultimately conclude it could go ahead.

According to the UK Committee on Climate Change, aviation is likely to be the UK’s highest emitting sector by 2050, as it is hard to decarbonise. Heathrow currently emits around 19 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than half of UK aviation emissions. A third runway would add a projected 9 million tonnes to the airport’s total annual CO2 output.

A spokesperson for Heathrow airport said: “Heathrow will ensure the expansion project is compliant with the UK’s climate change obligations, including under the Paris Climate Agreement, as part of our plans to reach net-zero carbon. We fully expect to be held to account by the government through the planning process.”

Read more: Where are US emissions after four years of Donald Trump? 

Friends of the Earth lawyer Katie de Kauwe questioned this argument in Heathrow’s appeal. “If it really makes no difference to the outcome, then why are you bringing the appeal?” she asked, in an interview with Climate Home. “Why not let the government conduct its review?” 

De Kauwe said that if the Supreme Court agrees with the previous ruling the government’s airports national policy statement will remain a “zombie policy” until the government reviews it. Without political will, the expansion plans are unlikely to happen, she said. Prime minister Boris Johnson, whose constituency is close to Heathrow, has been an outspoken critic of a third runway in the past. 

The verdict is expected in January.

De Kauwe described the case as “hugely significant”. “It is the first case that has ruled that government plans for a massive infrastructure project are unlawful on the basis of the Paris Agreement,” she said. 

Campaigners and lawyers say the verdict could set a precedent for other climate litigation cases relating to the Paris Agreement. 

“This case is being closely watched by lawyers around the world who want to see how much impact a country’s signature to the Paris Climate Agreement has on actual decision-making” Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University in New York, told Climate Home. 

“The ruling by the Court of Appeal seems to give at least some teeth to Paris.  The Supreme Court will either cement or pull those teeth,” Gerrard said. 

“We are seeing a movement across the world of climate litigation,” said de Kauwe. Campaign group Transport Action Network is challenging the UK government’s largest-ever road building programme by building on the Heathrow result, she said. “It is a huge boost for climate campaigners, [showing] what can be achieved through the courts.”

This article has been amended to remove an incorrect reference to the timing of the airports national policy statement.

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Together the three countries account for about 0.1% of world emissions.

Details of updated climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs):

• Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands, which says its 53,000 citizens account for a fractional 0.00001 percent of global emissions, says it will work to curb the Pacific islands’ vulnerability to storms and sea level rise while developing solar power to break dependence on diesel fuel.

Lacking land for solar power, it said it may place floating panels on lagoons and install panels in novel places such as on schools, basketball courts, hospitals, and at airports.

It was the first to submit a new NDC, in 2018, when it set a new goal of cutting emissions by 58% by 2035 and reaffirmed an aspiration for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

• Suriname

Suriname says it will step up climate action especially in electricity, road transport, agriculture and forests – sectors that account for 70% of the country’s emissions. Overall, it says that it is already a “carbon-negative country” because its tropical forests soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.

Among measures, the NDC will expand protected areas for forests and wetlands to cover 17% of the South American country by 2030, up from 14%.

The NDC stops short of setting economy-wide targets for emissions but outlines “a cost-effective pathway to decarbonisation of sustainable economic development, maintaining the integrity of natural forest acting as a carbon sink, and strengthening resilience.”

• Norway

Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer plans to cut emissions by 50-55% by 2030 below 1990 levels, in line with a European Green Deal outlined by the European Commission. Norway is not an EU member, but usually matches EU goals, which are currently for a cut of at least 40% by 2030.

It became the first developed nation to submit a new NDC, on 7 February, saying “the deadline is February 9.”

Norway’s emissions were 1.1% above 1990 levels in 2018 and Norway has failed to meet previous targets with domestic action. In 2010, for instance, the government pledged to cut emissions by 30-40% by 2020. It will only meet the goal by buying emissions quotas abroad.

• Other nations

Separately, a total of 107 governments representing 15% of emissions have promised to enhance NDC ambition sometime this year, according to the World Resources Institute think-tank.

There are 197 parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement. NDCs are the building blocks of global action, typically outlining policy goals for the next decade.

Documents implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement say countries are meant to bolster their NDCs every five years and submit the plans at least nine months before the relevant UN conferences, or Cop. This year’s Cop26 will be in Glasgow from 9-19 November, making 9 February a theoretical date for submissions.

But documents dating back to 2011 say the Paris Agreement was originally due to enter into force only in 2020, meaning that formal reviews will only start in 2025, 2030, 2035 and so on, legal scholars say. Governments may be able merely to re-submit existing plans in 2020.

But many governments, climate activists, the UN, cities and companies want urgent upgrades this year to tackle the worsening impacts of warming.

The post Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway upgrade climate plans before Cop26 appeared first on Climate Home News.

With nine months to go before the summit, or Cop26, the UK faces a steep climb to provide the confidence and diplomatic lift the world needs to galvanise political leaders into taking more ambitious action and curb greenhouse gas emissions growth.

But preparations for the summit have been off to a rocky start – and the job of rallying countries into bolder action could prove to get tougher yet.

Last week, UK prime minister Boris Johnson sacked former clean growth minister Claire O’Neill as Cop26 president. Her replacement is expected to be announced as part of a cabinet reshuffle in the coming days.

As she went, O’Neill slammed Johnson for showing no leadership over preparations for the summit, which she said were “miles off track”. “He doesn’t get it,” she told the BBC of the summit’s diplomatic gravitas.

Johnson launched Cop26 on Tuesday without a president to oversee the summit, nor a clear strategy to leverage the world’s largest emitters into submitting tougher climate plans before the Glasgow talks.

He urged all countries to follow the UK’s lead in setting net zero emissions goals before the end of the year – a goal that the UK itself is not on track to meet and that none of the world’s large emerging economies have signed up for so far.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is also failing to show enthusiasm for upgrading their climate plans.

Under a UN decision to implement the Paris Agreement, February 9 is the theoretical deadline for countries to communicate new or updated climate plans this year. Only the Marshall Islands and Suriname have so far met the deadline.

In a must-read report, Alister Doyle looks at the legality and implications of the missed deadline.

Back in the UK, Johnson does have a vision, one of a “global Britain” after Brexit.

How the government balances this double act of re-defining its place in the world while calling on leader to take greater climate action will be key to the success of its leadership this year.

Indeed, some confidence remains that the UK’s diplomatic leverage could still deliver a positive outcome at Cop26. But in private, negotiators are expressing concerns that time for action is now strikingly tight.

African youths’ call

When African youth activist Vanessa Nakate was cropped out from a picture at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it was one example too many of the lack of attention to the voices of those that are most affected by climate impacts.

The incident, which sparked outrage across the world, also led young African activists to highlight the lack of action by both African and world leaders to tackle the climate crisis on the continent.

“The biggest threat to action in my country and in Africa is the fact that those who are trying as hard as possible to speak up are … not able to tell their stories,” warned Nakate.

Turbines

A record 3.6 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity was installed across Europe in 2019. As the cost of building offshore wind farms continues to fall, the economic incentive for the continent to embrace wind power should be a given.

But the pace of deployment is too slow to meet the EU’s 2050 net zero emissions target, according to the industry.

The EU Commission estimates Europe will need between 230 and 450 GW of offshore wind by 2050 to decarbonise its energy system. At the end of 2019, total capacity reached 22 GW. Still a long way to go.

This week’s top stories

• World misses symbolic February deadline to ratchet up climate action before Cop26
• UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start
• Offshore wind deployment boom ‘too slow’ to meet EU climate target
• Democratic contenders in Iowa caucus aim to rejoin Paris accord in green goals
• UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020
• UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit
• Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change

The post ‘Miles off track’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The tension between the UK government’s priorities was on display this week as Prime Minister Boris Johnson both set out his vision for a global Britain and formally launched Cop26.

Outlining his “global Britain” campaign, Johnson declared his government was “ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once”.

Much hope rides on the expectations that the game will include climate diplomacy.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of UN Climate Change, told Climate Home News that Cop26 in Glasgow “was a post-Brexit opportunity to show that despite Brexit, Britain continues to have important leadership on global issues”.

But nine months before the UK is due to preside over the biggest diplomatic event it has ever hosted, there are no clear indications of how the government will deliver the confidence lift the world needs to deliver tougher climate targets.

UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020

At the Cop26 launch on Tuesday, Johnson, who had just sacked Claire O’Neill, the UK’s former clean growth minister, as Cop president, had little to say about the government’s diplomatic strategy for the summit.

He called on every country to follow the UK’s lead by setting net zero emissions goal this year and announced plans to bring forward a UK ban on sales of new diesel and petrol cars by five years, to 2035.

The climate talks in Glasgow have been billed as a critical moment for countries to revive the multilateralism that underpinned the Paris Agreement and leverage the world’s largest emitters into taking bolder climate action.

O’Neill, who was appointed Cop26 president in July, would have been the first Cop president not to hold any ministerial role.  The government said a minister would be replacing her.

Some observers interpreted the move as a positive signal that Johnson’s team understands the need for a political heavyweight to take the lead.

But the fallout between Johnson and O’Neill has also raised questions about the Prime Minister’s grasp of the diplomatic gravitas of hosting such an important climate meeting.

In a strongly worded rebuke letter, O’Neill accused Johnson of not giving the summit the attention and resources it needed, with preparations “miles off track”.

“In my judgement this isn’t a pretty place to be and we owe the world a lot better,” she wrote, calling on the government to make the climate talks the top of its priorities.

“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done….Please get this done too,” she urged. Johnson has called on the EU to agree a Canada-style free trade deal with the UK before the end of the year.

UK government drops Claire O’Neill as president of Cop26 summit

Diplomats have told CHN the UK’s work on Cop26 had only just started when O’Neill was dropped from the role. They expressed eagerness for the UK to start its diplomatic work as soon as possible.

Speaking to CHN before O’Neill was removed, Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said the UK was “expected to be able to do joined-up governance” without having to start again from scratch.

Johnson is anticipated to announce a new Cop26 president as part of a cabinet reshuffle, reported to take place next week.

The late timing of the announcement is putting more pressure on the UK to deliver greater ambition while finalising a number of negotiation issues left unresolved at the last UN talks in Madrid.

“Time is tight, but there is still enough time and enough leverage in the mix for the UK presidency to make some headway,” David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative, told CHN.

Once a new Cop26 president is appointed, it will be “a matter of rolling out that diplomatic effort as quickly and assertively as possible,” he added.

Possible candidates to replace O’Neill are already under intense scrutiny. For Jennifer Tollmann, an expert in climate diplomacy at think tank E3G, the new appointment will be “key to signalling to the rest of the world how serious [the UK government] is about the Cop”.

The new president will need to have good background understanding of the climate process, diplomatic experience and the commitment and determination to make the summit a success, Waskow and Tollmann agreed.

“It’s really important that the Prime Minister is fully attached to the outcome of the Cop because otherwise we will not get the top political attention that the Cop needs,” Nick Mabey, chief executive of E3G, said in an event at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London last month.

Among those rumoured for the job are former environment minister Michael Gove, former foreign secretary William Hague and environment and climate minister Zac Goldsmith.

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Inside the Cop26 presidency team, about 150 civil servants have been brought in to push ambition to the rest of the world. “Diplomats are ready to go, they are waiting for marching orders,” a UK official told CHN.

Even with the best geopolitical outlook, the scale of the Cop26 challenge is enormous.

Countries are under pressure to enhance their climate plans to bridge the gap between current emissions reduction pledges and what is necessary to limit global warming “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times.

Global emissions need to fall by 7.6% every year until 2030 for the world to be on track to limit warming to the toughest goal in the Paris Agreement of 1.5C, according to UN Environment. And global carbon emissions rose 0.6% in 2019 to a new record high.

Under the Paris deal, countries are due to “communicate or update” their 2030 climate plans by the end of the year. Countries have also agreed that successive climate plans “will represent a progression” and reflect their “highest possible ambition”.

This rachet-up mechanism, which underpins the Paris accord, is being tested for the first time.

But the geopolitical momentum for climate action is stalled, making the task ahead even greater.

The US will officially leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November, a day after the US presidential election, under a withdrawal by President Donald Trump. Leading Democratic candidates say they will immediately apply to rejoin if they beat him.

Irreconcilable rift cripples UN climate talks as majority stand against polluters

Meanwhile, entrenched nationalism, a trade war and slower growth have seen China and India bump climate action down their priority list.

Efforts to bolster momentum last year have failed. At Cop25, countries failed to agree on the rules to set up a global carbon market – an issue that needs to be resolved this year – and failed to make a clear call for more ambition.

“Cop25 really increased the diplomatic and confidence lift the UK needs to provide,” Mabey said.

The UK presidency is now largely dependent on the outcome of an EU-China summit in October, when the EU is hoping to broker a climate deal with Beijing to inject momentum into the process.

At home, the UK’s credibility lies on its own ability to develop a concrete plan to achieve its 2050 net zero emissions goal.

Last year, the UK was the first major developed economy to set a net zero goal into law. Under the Paris Agreement, all countries are expected to work out “mid-century, long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies” by the end of 2020.

“The year ahead is an acid test of the new [UK] government’s climate credibility,” Chris Stark, chief executive of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, wrote last week.

But analysis by the environmental think tank Green Alliance published on Monday found the UK to be off track to meet its 2050 target.

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For Mabey, the Paris Agreement hangs in the balance of the Cop26 outcome. “Failure is really on the agenda for Glasgow. If Glasgow fails then the Paris regime fails, and we lose another five to ten years building another regime,” he said.

In her letter to Johnson, O’Neill outlined a seven-point action plan to ramp up climate action. Strengthening countries’ climate plans and establishing carbon neutrality as the climate ambition goal topped the list.

Introducing a “properly-funded global package for adaptation and resilience building”, a focus on nature-based solutions and decarbonising finance flows also made the list.

The appointment of former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney and incoming UN special envoy for climate action and finance and former We Mean Business CEO Nigel Topping as the UK’s climate action champion has further boosted the UK’s finance agenda.

Kyte told CHN it was “absolutely appropriate to put finance right at the top of [Cop26’s] agenda” both in a real economy sense but also as part of the negotiations.

“Finance is the essential ingredient in moving the transition forward quickly,” said Kyte. “It is the essential glue for speeding up the action that we need.”

The post UK walks diplomatic tightrope for 2020 climate summit after shaky start appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a year’s time, the world’s largest economy will no longer be a member of the deal which saw nearly 200 countries commit to bend the emissions’ curve and limit global temperature “well below 2C”.

The multilateral order that underpinned the signing of the Paris accord in 2015 has been shaken to its core. Now, what happens next?

Well, it’s not all change. The US will remain a party to the agreement until 4 November 2020, meaning it’s business as usual in Cop25 in Madrid.

Even outside the Paris deal, the US will remain a party to the UN climate convention (UNFCCC). In practice, this means the US will retain its seat at the climate negotiation table as an observer. Although unable to block consensus or take decisions relevant to the Paris deal, the US could still yield its soft power as the world’s largest economy to shape global climate policy.

How much is there left to influence? That’s another question. With the architecture of the Paris accord mostly finalised, the US has been able to “exert its influence when it mattered,” as one diplomat put it.

The US withdrawal could be short lived. A Democrat election victory could see Washington reverting the process within 30 days – cranking up the pressure on next year’s polls.

Cop25 

UN Climate Change issued a notice about the relocated Cop25, now taking place from 2 to 13 December at the Ifema conference centre in Madrid, Spain. Chile was forced to pull out from hosting the event last week because of civil unrest but retains the Cop presidency.

The UN secretariat said it was “working closely” with both the Chilean and Spanish governments “to organise the conference as efficiently and expeditiously as possible”.

Despite the very short turn around from Chile to Spain, the secretariat said it was making “every effort” to maintain large participation and exhibition booths and events dependent on available space at the venue. More information will be published on the UN website when available.

Protest ban 

The UK’s High Court overturned a London-wide ban against Extinction Rebellion protests, deeming it unlawful. The ban, known as section 14, was imposed by London’s Met Police after protesters disrupted the UK capital for more than a week during XR’s Autumn Uprising last month.

The ruling has rendered illegal hundreds of arrests, with Extinction Rebellion protesters now able to sue the police for wrongful imprisonment and seek compensation.

As lawyer Jules Carey said, this could become “a very expensive mistake” for the police.

In other XR news, the police impounded a skull during the October protest, which, as Natalie Sauer found out, may be very valuable.

Chinese roulette 

French president Emmanuel Macron was in Beijing this week to strengthen France and the EU’s economic, commercial and strategic ties with China. The meeting was an important step forward in the diplomatic wrangling between Europe and Beijing ahead of an exceptional EU-China summit next September.

The summit is crucially planned a few weeks before the UN climate talks in Glasgow, when countries are due to update their climate plans. Could this be the moment for the EU to engage in race to the top with China? Check out Climate Home News’ website next week for more.

Quick hits 

• Trump begins formal US withdrawal from Paris Agreement
• US will keep seat at climate talks after it leaves Paris deal
• Extinction Rebellion art seized by police includes Ron Mueck skull
• London police ban on Extinction Rebellion was unlawful, court finds

And in climate conversations 

• Our food system is broken. Here’s how we fix it

The post What happens next? – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Announcing the withdrawal on Monday, secretary of state Mike Pompeo reiterated the administration’s view that the deal entered into by Barack Obama gave an advantage to developing countries, in particular China.

“President Trump made the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers by US pledges made under the agreement,” said Pompeo.

The move further isolates the US administration as the only national government in the world that officially turned its back on global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit global temperature rise “well below” 2C.

Four years ago, the US played a critical role in brokering the deal it is now exiting by bringing China on side.

Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, said the move was “cruel to future generations, leaving the world less safe and productive”.

He also countered the idea that the Paris deal was unfair to American workers. “It also fails people in the United States, who will lose out on clean energy jobs, as other nations grab the competitive and technological advantages that the low-carbon future offers.”

Trump first announced his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris deal in June 2017, but Monday – three years after the deal entered into force – was the earliest opportunity for the administration to legally notify of its withdrawal.

Executive secretary of UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa marked that anniversary by tweeting a video of diplomats and negotiators celebrating the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“Let’s keep up crucial momentum for global climate action,” Espinosa said.

But even outside the agreement, the US will continue to take part in the climate talks.

The withdrawal procedures will take a year to complete meaning the US will officially leave the Paris deal on the 4 November 2020, one day after the US election on 3 November.

US will keep seat at climate talks after it leaves Paris deal

The move is likely to further polarise the climate issue in next year’s US election with every leading Democratic candidates pledging to immediately re-join the agreement if elected – a process that could take as a little as 30 days.

Top Democrats responded by affirming their support for the deal. Former vice-president Joe Biden called Trump’s decision “shameful”. South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg said there was an “opportunity”, post-2020, to use the reentry of the Paris Agreement to “restore American credibility” on the world stage.

Polls also suggest a large majority of Americans support the US remaining in the Paris deal.

A 2018 survey by the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication found that 77% of Americans believed the US should remain in the Paris Agreement, including 60% of Republicans. Among registered voters, 66% said they opposed Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris deal.

The federal government’s regression on climate change has sparked a bottom up race to fulfil at least part of the US’ promises to cut emissions. A coalition of progressive local governments, states and businesses claim their collective efforts will bring the US two-thirds of the way to meeting its 2025 pledge to the Paris deal.

The timetable for withdrawal means the US will continue to be a legal party to the Paris Agreement during the climate talks hosted in Madrid next month, after Chile had to cancel the meeting due to social unrest. This will give the US administration a final say on how the Paris Agreement should be implemented.

The talks are due to finalise the rulebook of the Paris accord and resolve contentious issues over how carbon credits can be traded between countries – technical discussions which are key to ensure carbon markets encourage additional emissions cut.

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Once formally out of the agreement next year, the US will still be able to attend climate talks and sit in Paris-related discussions as an observer without the ability to make-decisions or block consensus but with the soft power to continue to shape global climate diplomacy.

Pompeo said: “In international climate discussions, we will continue to offer a realistic and pragmatic model – backed by a record of real world results – showing innovation and open markets lead to greater prosperity, fewer emissions, and more secure sources of energy.  We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience to the impacts of climate change and prepare for and respond to natural disasters.”

The 2020 climate talks in Glasgow, known as Cop26, will be the first test of the US administration’s new position in the negotiations.

The summit is a critical moment for countries to raise their climate plans and revert the trend of global emissions growth – a tremendous task without the diplomatic leverage of the world’s largest economy.

The post Trump begins formal US withdrawal from Paris Agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a paper published on Sunday, the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC) said China had “the potential and conditions for improving” its Paris commitment, known as a ‘nationally determined contribution’ or NDC.

The NCSC recommended the government “evaluate and demonstrate the options for updating the 2030 nationally determined contributions in 2020”.

The NCSC, an official government thinktank, is one of the leading influencers of Chinese policy in the international climate arena. But observers said the paper did not represent government policy.

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China’s current pledge to the Paris deal is to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. But for years there have been signs that this target would be achieved early.

The country achieved its 2020 goal, to cut emissions 45% for each unit of economic growth (carbon intensity), by the end of last year. Given this faster-than-expected economic transition, China’s lead climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said last month that he thought the 2030 target would be achieved.

In that context, the NCSC said an early increase to China’s Paris pledge was possible.

Last week, Greenpeace analysis found China’s carbon emissions for the first three months of 2018 had increased faster than in recent years. But the NGO’s senior climate and energy policy officer Li Shuo told Climate Home News this did not threaten China’s 2020 or 2030 targets.

“On one hand emissions are indeed growing at a very rapid rate, but on the other hand it’s not growing to the extent of reversing our previous assessment that China is going to overachieve its 2020 and 2030 targets,” said Li. “As a result there is an open question in front of China, which is: do you want to ratchet up your NDC or not?”

Under the 2015 Paris climate deal, countries volunteered their own pollution cuts and other climate change efforts. These pledges are due to be revisited and updated in 2025. There will also be a moment in 2020 for progressive players to deliver new submissions. It is not yet clear how many will be ready to show increased ambition.

China: New environment ministry unveiled, with huge staff boost

Almost no country has volunteered cuts that represent a fair share of efforts to keep the world from warming by 2C. This means there is pressure on many countries to increase their pledges before 2025. But few want to commit to sharper cuts unless others join them.

The NCSC paper noted China’s role on the global stage was changing and acknowledged its “image as a responsible, big country” – a reference to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s 2018 New Year speech – came with pressure to lead on issues such as climate change.

With its decarbonisation outstripping its promises, China could put pressure on other countries without having to make major changes to its current direction, said Greenpeace’s Li.

“China is actually in the position, if you look at its real economy, to ratchet up, so why do we waste that opportunity?” he said.

But the NCSC also warned updating China’s pledge could be seen as an admission that China’s original Paris commitments were not ambitious, undermining any diplomatic boost. US president Donald Trump has frequently criticised the Paris accord for not eliciting tough enough action from China.

The NCSC laid out several ways China could update its pledge. These included increasing China’s emissions targets, providing clearer information regarding its emissions to the global community, expanding the targets to include greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide or committing to new policies.

The paper also discussed China’s approach to the mandatory upgrading of its pledge in 2025. It said China’s 2025 revision should set a new 2035 target. This would synchronise the targets with the year China’s government has set for the country to achieve “modernisation”.

Spain: New government joins call to strengthen EU climate targets

The NCSC is a government-affiliated thinktank. Its director and the paper’s lead author is Chai Qimin, who negotiates as part of the Chinese government delegation during UN climate talks.

When it comes to international climate policy, said Greenpeace’s Li, “the NCSC is one of the leading, if the not the leading, agency to provide guidance or advice to the Chinese government”.

Isabel Hilton, CEO of chinadialogue, warned against placing too much significance on the paper. “This is a description of process rather than any policy initiative. Thinktanks contribute ideas, but don’t make policy,” she said.

Any decision on altering the country’s Paris pledge would pass through the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and may be considered by the State Council or even president Xi, said Li.

He said the NCSC paper should not be seen as an adoption of any policy direction, but was nonetheless significant as it showed the discussion evolving.

It comes as Xie prepares for a series of climate talks with ministers from around the world in Berlin and Brussels. Cooperation between the EU and China is seen as critical to the success of this year’s UN climate summit.

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The post China should consider increasing Paris climate pledge early – government thinktank appeared first on Climate Home News.

In Paris, nations reached agreement to mitigate against and adapt to climate change. It was an agreement between countries to take national action, but we live in a globalised world and climate change has global consequences. The Paris Agreement was never going to be enough.

The UN needs now to task global and multinational organisations with addressing climate impacts of global significance. In particular, it needs to prepare for potential conflict as a result of increased resource scarcity in fragile states, the fall-out of mass ice-melt on global sea level and the potential for states to resort to unsanctioned geo-engineering.

The UN system as a whole can and must do more to effectively manage climate-related risks to global peace and security. This becomes increasingly important as we begin to understand the true reality of climate impacts. The United Nations must change – and fast – as the risk of extreme impacts is growing by the day.

Here are four clear policy objectives the UN could establish.

First, climate change should be anchored at the heart of the secretary general’s UN reform agenda. António Guterres is pursuing a raft of reforms to improve the UN’s operations to deliver sustainable development and peace. Climate-related risks interplay with a range of the other challenges facing the organisation, from inequality and political instability to resourcing and programming.

Sidelining climate change is a mistake, and reforms that do not take into account a climate-changed future will be doomed to failure. With hurricanes, floods and droughts aplenty, the reality of climate change is already knocking loudly at the UN’s door.

Second, an ‘institutional home’ needs to be established to systematically address climate-related risks across all UN agencies and operations should be created under the auspices of the secretary-general. The cell could serve as an analytical task-force, translating the vast array of climate science and on-the-ground experience into digestible information for decision-makers. Agencies as well as political bodies, including the UN security council, would be advised on current and impending climate realities to improve their effectiveness and realign priorities.

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Third, this newly created unit should be mandated to conduct a climate risk assessment of all UN agencies and operations. There is little understanding of the strain the UN will experience from climate impacts. A climate risk assessment would identify the risks to UN effectiveness in maintaining peace and security. Furthermore, it would highlight priority areas for reform and guide resourcing.

Fourth, a special representative for climate security should be appointed to support political dialogue on climate-related security risks. The profound changes wrought by low carbon transition and climate impacts will involve tough political choices. An envoy would help elevate pressing concerns and convene actors to identify political solutions. For example, an envoy could gather nations and agencies with shared climate-related risks to reach agreement on resource sharing in the face of scarcity.

Time is running out and the world’s citizens are understandably growing anxious. As the fall-out from globalisation settles, people are identifying climate change as the world’s gravest threat. To maintain the UN’s relevance and make good on its mission, self-styled ‘UN reformer’ Guterres must live up to his name and place climate change centre stage.

Camilla Born is a Senior Policy Adviser in Climate Diplomacy and Risk at E3G. She is currently working in collaboration with SIPRI to support Sweden’s membership of the UN Security Council.

The post ‘UN reformer’ Guterres must do more on climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD) released a statement on Wednesday outlining announcing it was seeking “all reports and memoranda that the administration relied upon when it made its decision”.

The CBD has requested related emails, telephone logs and notes from meetings regarding the Paris accord between Trump, his secretary of state Rex Tillerson and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt.

Comment: Trump lays groundwork for staying in Paris Agreement

If the request is successful, it will reveal details of internal wrangling over whether to leave the deal or stay in. The discord was widely reported during the first half of this year, as government and White House sources leaked regularly to the press.

CBD staff attorney Clare Lakewood said the freedom of information act (FOIA) requests were an attempt to uncover which arguments the president considered while making his decision.

“We need to know if Trump put any real thought at all into this profoundly dangerous decision,” she said. “Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement isolated America by highlighting this administration’s reckless contempt for our planet’s future. Americans have a right to learn how Trump officials were influenced by scientific ignorance and fossil fuel industry lobbyists.”

Tillerson, who previously served as chief executive of oil major ExxonMobil, publicly backed staying in the Paris accord during his senate confirmation hearing. But it is not known how Tillerson made his case in private.

Pruitt, who assisted fossil fuel donors while he was attorney general of Oklahoma, was a vociferous critic of the deal. Tillerson’s state department is responsible for the US’ interactions with the UN climate process. But on 1 June, when Trump announced his intention to withdraw the US from the accord, it was Pruitt he invited to give closing remarks.

EPA boss: ‘US should exit Paris climate agreement’

Also invited to Trump’s announcement in June were representatives of conservative lobby groups, including the American Energy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. All have close ties to the fossil fuel industry and campaigned against the Paris deal.

The Paris pact was struck in 2015 and agreed by every country on earth, bar Syria and Nicaragua. Under the terms of the deal, the US will not be able to formally apply to withdraw until 2019. Until then, it remains a full party.

The requests from the CBD were submitted to the Department of State, the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget.

The CBD makes regular FOIA requests as part of its campaigning and it is not the first time it has deployed the tactic against Pruitt since he took over at the EPA. In February, after the EPA failed to respond to a request for Pruitt’s daily schedule, the CBD successfully sued the agency. In May, it filed another lawsuit over “censorship” of climate information.

The post NGO demands Trump-Pruitt emails on Paris withdrawal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Time Magazine has said it. The BBC has said it. The Guardian, too.

All agree that US President Donald Trump has pulled his country out of the Paris Agreement – the 2015 deal under the United Nations climate convention in which every nation vowed to constrain its greenhouse gas emissions and thus hold climate change within bounds that many regard as ‘safe’.

So it must be true, right?

Well; I’ve thought for a while (and written before) that it ain’t necessarily so. The US clearly hasn’t withdrawn, despite the newsprint; and my personal conclusion is that it probably won’t.

Remember that there are basically two ways for the US to withdraw. One is to abide by the terms of the Agreement – which means it can’t submit formal notice to withdraw until November 2019, which then takes a further year to take effect. The withdrawal date turns out to be the day after the next US Presidential election. When Mr Trump spoke with so much fanfare about pulling out back in June, in the White House Rose Garden, he implied that he was taking this formal course; and this was confirmed in a diplomatic cable leaked to Reuters last week.

The second course is just to walk away – what I described earlier as the ‘Cartman solution’. But there’s no sign of that happening.

So, by my reckoning the US is in for the duration. Last week I decided to put my money where my gob is, and offer a bet on it. Follow my Twitter stream and there’s a bottle of brandy up for grabs for anyone who thinks the US is seriously on the way out.

I will bet bottle of brandy that US won’t leave #ParisAgreement. Needs to be time-limited so… still in on Christmas Day 2020. Any takers? https://t.co/YmGqFnfvqC

— Richard Black (@_richardblack) August 9, 2017

Richard Black is director of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He is a former BBC science and environment correspondent. This blog was originally posted on the ECIU website. 

The post A bottle of brandy that Trump won’t leave the Paris deal. Any takers? appeared first on Climate Home News.

But amid the bellicose rumblings, Trump was also continuing his political dance with humankind’s common enemy – climate change.

A week ago, ambassador Nikki Haley issued a notice to the UN secretary general affirming Trump’s previous public statements that he intends to leave the Paris climate agreement. Yet at the end of a week that revealed more than any so far about Donald Trump’s thinking on climate change, the prospect of him actually leaving the Paris deal seems to be becoming more uncertain.

An advisory from secretary of state Rex Tillerson, leaked to Reuters, outlined to US diplomats the administration’s desired framing of responses to questions regarding Trump’s stance on Paris.

Such an FAQ was needed because, like all of Trump administration’s statements about Paris, the Haley letter left many questions unanswered.

Notably, the Tillerson memo makes clear that the US is not seeking to rewrite the Paris Agreement, nor is it seeking a new climate deal.

“Rather, the Administration is considering options for potential re-engagement in the Paris Agreement under different terms,” it reads.

This is not news. During the speech in the Rose Garden in June in which he announced his intention to leave the Paris deal, Trump was clear that he would be open to “renegotiating” and rejoining. Tillerson’s note certainly presents the issue as one that continues to be open-ended (although the secretary’s publicly-stated preference for the US to remain in the accord may have influenced the way he represents the president’s position).

Diplomatic cable: US has no plans to renegotiate Paris Agreement

Under the Paris deal, no country can formally give notice they will leave until late 2019, with the withdrawal to take effect a year later. Because of this, Trump’s announcements last month and last week are no more than political manoeuvring. Nothing he says now – not even his “diplomatic note” to the UN – has any consequence regarding the US’ continuing membership of the climate accord it adopted in 2015 along with almost 200 other countries and formally joined in 2016.

Trump’s statements about Paris seem nonsensical when you hold them up against the reality of the agreement. The speech in June set the tone. The Paris deal had turned the US into a laughing stock. It was “draconian” and unfairly allowed other nations to do nothing while US workers were penalised, he said. It was a bad deal.

But how can the non-binding, voluntarily submitted commitments each country makes be draconian? His statement only make sense when you consider that the Rose Garden speech, his quibbling about climate policy at international summits, the letter to the UN and, of course, his tweets, are all addressed to the coalition of voters who elected him in November.

By misrepresenting the Paris deal, Trump is simply reflecting the worst suspicions about the agreement and the UN climate process held by a large section of the US public. By rewriting the agreement as a cat’s cradle of anti-US measures, akin to sanctions, Trump sets himself up for a popular crusade.

Report: Trump EPA loses court battle to cut air con pollutants

But what does victory for Trump look like? Walking away?

The theatre around the Paris deal has given Trump a more resounding option. Under the terms, he can lower the US’ voluntary contribution of carbon emission cuts, then announce he has ‘renegotiated’ the US’ commitments to the deal in the US’ favour. The design of the agreement makes this possible. Any country can pledge to cut, or not cut, their emissions as much as they choose.

A downgrading of the US’ already middling commitment will bring howls of rage from green groups, Europe, China and the developing world. That will only make Trump’s position stronger, fuelling his gripe that the world is aligned against the US.

Analysing the mind of this capricious president is foolhardy. But it is this reporter’s opinion that for Trump, the strongest narrative to sell to his base is that of the great deal maker, going to war against a deal that was signed by almost every country on earth, and getting everything he asked for.

Trump has already experienced the powerful impact he can have from within the agreement. His insertion of a US policy passage in the G20 leaders statement allowed a space for language, including backing for fossil fuels, that could never have otherwise appeared in such a document.

Pro-fossil language was also included in a very brief media advisory released on the same day as the UN letter last week. Its inclusion in such a short statement reflects the importance of this element in Trump’s climate policy. He wants to re-legitimise support for oil, gas, even coal, in the conversations that surround climate change. His ability to do that will be weakened if he is no longer in those conversations.

Report: Australian bank sued over failure to disclose climate risks

In his letter to the UN, Trump made clear that while the US remains a party to the accord his government would remain active in international climate talks, sending state department delegations to watch out for “US interests”.

In three years when the time comes to submit formal notice, Trump will have at his disposal a state department that will have weeded out the remaining Obama-era climate staff. The Tillerson memo exposed the growth of new language around this issue. Two months ago, the only official line available to diplomats was a holding line about the Administration “reviewing its policies”. In reality, no decision on Paris has been made. But now the state department has 3300 words worth of detailed advice on framing the same uncertainty. Leaving the Paris deal in 2020 would withdraw these officials from a conversation they will have mastered by then.

Decision time for Trump will come just as the primary season for the 2020 election begins to hit top gear. Whatever he chooses to do will ultimately be guided by the electoral calculus of the moment. But clearly there is a pathway being crafted that allows him to further promote his mythical deal-making powers, aid the fossil fuel industry and most importantly… win.

I’m not alone here. This week former BBC environment correspondent Richard Black – now head of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit – bet a bottle of brandy that the US would not have left the accord by Christmas, 2020. But will @realDonaldTrump take him up on it?

The post Trump lays groundwork for staying in Paris Agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under the terms of the accord, no nation can withdraw until November 2020 and cannot even formally notify the UN of its intention to leave until 2019. So the communication serves only for Donald Trump to remind the world he is seeking “suitable terms for reengagement”.

The letter, sent to UN secretary-general António Guterres by the US representative to the UN Nikki Haley, reads:

The Representative of the Unites States of America to the United Nations presents her compliments to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

This is to inform the Secretary-General, in connection with the Paris Agreement, adopted at Paris on December 12, 2015 (“the Agreement”), that the United States intends to exercise its right to withdraw from the Agreement. Unless the United States identifies suitable terms for reengagement, the United States will submit to the Secretary-General, in accordance with Article 28, paragraph 1 of the Agreement, formal written notification of its withdrawal as soon as it is eligible to do so. Pending the submission of that notification, in the interest of transparency for parties to the Agreement, the United States requests that the Secretary-General inform the parties to the Agreement and the States entitled to become parties to the Agreement of this communication relating to the Agreement.

The Representative of the Unites States of America to the United Nations avails herself of the opportunity to renew to the Secretary-General the assurances of her highest consideration.

The note does clarify one matter. Susan Biniaz, a former state department legal advisor, now senior fellow at the UN Foundation, highlights the reference to Article 28, paragraph 1, in comments to Columbia Law School’s climate law blog:

“The president’s original announcement suggested (but did not say explicitly) that the United States would be withdrawing only from the Paris Agreement, not also from the Framework Convention on Climate Change (which the United States joined in 1992). Withdrawal from the Convention would have accelerated withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by a few years, but would have been perceived as an even more dramatic walk-back from international climate engagement.”

The reference to the specific paragraph, says Biniaz, “makes clear that the intent is to withdraw from Paris only”.

On Friday, Guterres’ spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said the secretary general saw the US decision as a “major disappointment for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote global security”.

On Trump’s offer of renewed US involvement under unspecified terms, Dujarric added: “The secretary general welcomes any effort to reengage in the Paris Agreement by the United States”.

In a media release (below) from the State Department, the terms of reengagement are fleshed out slightly. If the agreement can be demonstrably more favourable to the US economy, it says, then Trump will reconsider. In reality, the Paris Agreement allows the US to choose the emissions cuts it makes (or does not make). It is hard to imagine terms more favourable than “do as you see fit”.

But this is a political game. Trump wants to be seen to be renegotiating a better deal for the US people. How this plays out will depend entirely on which narrative he deems more in his political interest.

If he eventually leaves, it will be because the agreement was “draconian” and leaders who want to hurt the US refused to negotiate with him. If he reverses his position, it will be because he thinks he can sell a downgrade of the US’ commitments to the accord as a crushing diplomatic win. He has three years to make that calculation, by which time he will be running for reelection.

The media release also includes language that calls for continued, cleaner burning of fossil fuels. In recent international forums such as the G20 and G7, the US has pushed for such language to be included in formal texts, much to the chagrin of other leaders.

Critically, the US also states its intention to maintain diplomatic engagement in the UN climate process while it remains a party to the agreement. That means state department teams continuing to show up until the US can formally leave the agreement in 2020.

Media release

Today, the United States submitted a communication to the United Nations, in its capacity as depositary for the Paris Agreement, regarding the U.S. intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as soon as it is eligible to do so, consistent with the terms of the Agreement. As the President indicated in his June 1 announcement and subsequently, he is open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favourable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.

The United States supports a balanced approach to climate policy that lowers emissions while promoting economic growth and ensuring energy security. We will continue to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through innovation and technology breakthroughs, and work with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and deploy renewable and other clean energy sources, given the importance of energy access and security in many nationally determined contributions.

The United States will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations and meetings, including the 23^rd Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration. Such participation will include ongoing negotiations related to guidance for implementing the Paris Agreement.

The post Trump letter to UN on leaving Paris climate accord – in full appeared first on Climate Home News.

The letter will be the first communication the US has made with the UN regarding the president’s announcement in June that he intend to withdraw and possibly “renegotiate” the US’ participation in the deal.

Sources told E&E the state department had begun circulating information to its employees that the US would tell the UN it would “remain engaged in the Paris process until it can officially exit in November 2020” and was keeping the door open to a reversal if (unspecified) conditions were met.

But the letter also indicated that the president’s intention was to leave the deal.

Report: Donald Trump says US will leave Paris climate agreement

The Paris deal does not allow signatories to make any formal application to leave until three years after the deal was struck. Then it requires one year of notice. That coincidentally means that the US cannot fully withdraw until one day after the next US election – 4 November, 2020.

Therefore any communication with the UN on Friday would carry no legal or formal weight.

According to the New York Times, the White House letter read: “As the President indicated in his June 1 announcement and subsequently, he is open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the US can identify terms that are more favourable to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”

The statement said the continuation of a US state department team at climate talks, due to resume in Bonn in November, was in order to “protect US interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration”.

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Andrew Steer, president and CEO of World Resources Institute, said the US intention to remain engaged in the process may be met with some degree of openness.

“The letter to the UNFCCC does imply a US desire to remain engaged in international climate talks on how the Paris Agreement should be implemented. The United States could engage constructively in those negotiations on an issue such as transparency. But a climate loner that is intent on withdrawing from the Paris Agreement will not be listened to if it aims to weaken or undermine the accord in any way,” said Steer.

The state department did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change similarly did not respond.

The post Trump to submit notice of Paris withdrawal to UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

Trump himself was characteristically incoherent in his announcement, calling the agreement both “non binding” and “draconian” in the same sentence. The recent G20 communique also studiously avoided this question. While the communique’s unprecedented split language on climate change noted Trump’s decision to cease implementation and eventually withdraw from the agreement, it did not comment on the legal implications of that decision.

Most legal analysts, climate negotiators, and other close observers of the process have taken the position that the agreement itself makes emission reduction pledges essentially voluntary, since countries have free rein to set their own targets and policies and are not required to meet the targets they put forward.

Although these commentators are mainly correct, the truth is that whether or not the pledges are legally binding is not that important to the effectiveness of the agreement. What really matters is whether countries are willing to hold each other accountable for putting forward ambitious pledges and making good faith efforts to meet them.

Report: Donald Trump says US will leave Paris climate agreement

Under the agreement, countries are expected to put forward their own “nationally determined” contributions and periodically report on their progress toward meeting them. Since the pledges are self-defined and non-binding, peer pressure, not legal obligation, must do the hard work of driving ambition, deterring free-riding and ensuring accountability.

For this to work, countries must actually be willing to press laggards to take actions that are consistent with the overarching goals of the agreement. If it becomes evident that there are no consequences for shirking responsibility, even the most rigorous reporting and review will not be sufficient to ensure that countries do their share or honour their pledges.

While all this has been clear from the start, the Paris Agreement is rarely described as politically enforceable. That may be partly due to the fact that the concept of political enforceability has a rather checkered history in climate diplomacy.

After the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference spectacularly failed to secure a legally binding agreement, some parties (including the US) sought to put a brave face on the outcome by insisting that the Copenhagen Accord was “politically binding” because of the hands-on involvement of heads of state in negotiating it. Many participants and observers balked at this effort to salvage a deeply disappointing outcome and dismissed the notion of a politically binding agreement as a pale imitation of the legally binding treaty they were looking for.

Much of the objection to the concept of “political bindingness” stems from the inclination to conflate an agreement’s legal character with its enforceability. Many believe that a legally binding agreement is, by definition, more enforceable than a politically binding one.

But this need not be the case. For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a legally binding treaty, but as its name implies, was only intended to be a broad “framework” for elaborating more specific pledges in future agreements (like the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement). For that reason, it included only vague commitments and has a dispute resolution mechanism that is consent-based and non-binding.

By contrast, the Iran nuclear deal is readily enforceable even though it is not legally binding. It contains very detailed requirements for Iran to curtail its ability to process nuclear material in exchange for specific, stepwise relief from economically debilitating sanctions by the P5+1 countries (the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, the United States, Germany and the European Union). Thus, it is politically enforceable in that each side could be subjected to rather serious consequences in the event of a breach. US secretary of defence James Mattis, a harsh critic of the Iran deal, recently conceded its politically binding nature when he told the New Yorker that “I would not have signed the Iran deal, but it’s signed – we gave our word and we have to play the ball as it lies.”

What the comparison between, for example, the original UNFCCC treaty and the Iran deal shows us is that the perceived interests of the parties, more than the legal form of the agreement, determines the strength of the enforcement regime and the incentives for compliance.

Analysis: Trump desire to renegotiate Paris deal ‘incoherent’ and ‘clumsy’

In the Iran deal, the P5+1 were convinced that their core national interests would be put at risk by a nuclear armed Iran, and they were willing to deploy substantial economic and diplomatic resources to avert that threat. On the other hand, in 1992, the parties to the UNFCCC did not yet fully perceive climate change to present the same kind of imminent risk to vital interests that is now widely recognised and therefore accepted weaker incentives for action and compliance.

All of which is to say that, like the Iran deal, the Paris Agreement is, at the end of the day, a political agreement. Its success will depend on the extent to which countries have come to see climate change as a threat to core interests and are therefore willing to enforce it.

Rehabilitating the concept of political enforceability in climate diplomacy could help in this regard. The Agreement would be better positioned to withstand Trump’s stated intent to cease implementation and eventually withdraw if its strongest champions talked openly about parties being politically bound to their pledges and about the political consequences of failing to adhere to them. Whereas in Copenhagen this might have been seen as an admission of weakness and defeat, in today’s context it should be understood as showing strength and resolve.

Steve Herz is a senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s International Climate Programme,

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As she does, it is worth bearing in mind that, in the wake of the US president’s decision to pull out of the Agreement, the UK’s divorce from the EU is the last thing the international community needs.

Brexit could have a profoundly destabilising impact on global momentum to address climate change; and the harder the Brexit, the greater the magnitude of these potential repercussions.

The negative consequences, according to a new report I authored for the Dublin-based Institute of International and European Affairs, ripple out from the loss of UK influence at the EU negotiating table. The EU has traditionally offered leadership in global efforts to address climate change, and together with China is now the glue holding the increasingly fragile Paris Agreement together.

Within the EU, the UK has historically been a key engine of strong climate policy, aligning itself to the clean and green grouping of Member States, including Germany and the Nordic countries.

The UK has consistently taken on more than its fair share of the collectively agreed EU decarbonisation objectives. This was the case for the Kyoto commitment period between 2008 and 2012, and in the post-Kyoto period that we are in currently. Most importantly, the UK is pencilled in for a significantly above average share to the EU’s pledge to the Paris Agreement, a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030.

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The UK has also been a strong supporter of the EU’s flagship climate policy, its carbon trading scheme, which covers over 45% of all heat trapping emissions from 31 countries. The scheme has flagged badly in recent years, with carbon prices hovering around €5, far too low to promote low-carbon investments. To drive up the price, the UK called for the EU to permanently cancel a large number of the surplus carbon credits, going well beyond other reform proposals on the table.

The so-called Visegrád grouping of Eastern European countries, led by Poland, has frequently opposed the UK’s ambition and reform proposals.

The ‘hardness’ of the final Brexit will determine the magnitude of the repercussions. In a soft Brexit scenario, where the UK chooses to remain in the EU’s single market (which enables frictionless trade of goods and services), membership of EU’s carbon trading scheme would likely be retained. However, the UK would withdraw from the collective EU approach to agreeing and sharing climate targets. This would remove UK influence at EU negotiations, tilting the balance of power towards the less ambitious grouping of member states. EU leadership and ambition would suffer.

In a so-called hard Brexit, where the UK leaves the single market and the customs union, the UK would likely withdraw from the EU’s carbon trading scheme, and its influence on the EU’s climate policy would therefore be further diminished.

In both soft and hard Brexit, a revising downward of the EU’s pledge to the Paris Agreement would likely be required. This is because the UK contributes disproportionately to the overall EU pledge, and other Member States are unlikely to want to take up the slack post-Brexit. This would have a destabilising impact on the Paris Agreement.

In what might be termed an ultra-hard scenario, where the UK seeks to gain competitive advantage through deregulation following a hard Brexit, the situation gets worse. In this case, the UK would be unlikely to submit an ambitious national pledge to the Paris Agreement, if indeed it submitted a pledge at all. The stability of the Paris Agreement could be threatened.

Report: Germany ‘massively weakened’ draft G20 climate plan to appease Trump

While ultra-hard Brexit might be considered unlikely, it should not be entirely discounted. A key perceived opportunity from Brexit, and part of its inherent driving logic, is cutting EU “red tape” with a view to gaining competitive advantage for the UK economy. Cutting climate regulations, such as environmental standards for buildings, cars, and appliances, is a clarion call of the powerful right-wing UK press, and might prove too tempting to resist.

Somewhat counterintuitively, in most scenarios, the implications for the UK’s national climate policy are limited. This is because the UK’s climate ambition is underpinned by domestic legislation such as the Climate Change Act (2008), and is not a function of EU Membership per se. The exception, of course, is the ultra-hard Brexit world, where the UK rolls back its domestic climate policy following a hard Brexit. In this scenario, there are profoundly destabilising impacts on decarbonisation momentum at all levels: within the UK, and at EU and UN fora.

In most policy spheres, the UK will be disproportionally negatively affected by its decision to leave the EU, be it in trade, foreign policy or security. However, when it comes to climate change, under most Brexit scenarios the most profoundly negative consequence and not felt by the UK, but by the EU and internationally.

The only scenario where there are no negative or destabilising forces for climate protection is where the partners patch up their differences, and the UK decision to leave the EU is reversed. Like ultra-hard Brexit, this might be considered somewhat unlikely. On the other hand, negative news could drive civil society opposition to Brexit as the full economic, political and regulatory implications become clearer over the coming year, and the fallacy of having one’s cake while also eating it is exposed.

The US could also eventually revoke its decision to withdraw from Paris, although that would likely require another federal election. No matter how unlikely, one can always hope.

Joseph Curtin is a research fellow for climate policy at the Institute of International and European Affairs and at University College Cork, and a member of the Irish Government’s Climate Change Advisory Council. Opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

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A growing coalition of ‘sub-nationals’ – that is states, cities, corporations, counties, universities, grass-root networks, non-profit organisations, individuals – have come to see the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by the Trump administration a reckless act of geo-political vandalism. Thousands have signed pledges to stick to the deal struck in 2015.

But the Paris Agreement is not just about emission reductions. It is, as highlighted in a recent Climate Home article, equally about providing financial support to developing countries – especially vulnerable ones – in their fight against climate change and its adverse impacts.

One of the key instruments of the Paris Agreement for this purpose is a number of multilateral funds collectively known as the agreement’s ‘financial mechanism’. These funds serve as a beacon to developing countries that their plight is recognised and appreciated. This helps to reduce the prevailing sense of injustice, which otherwise would scupper all efforts to coordinate the worldwide carbon cuts necessary to address climate change successfully.

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With this in mind, the question then is how can these ‘sub-nationals’ contribute to multilateral climate funding under the Paris Agreement?

The most straightforward option, available to all including individuals, is the crowdfunding tool of the multilateral Adaptation Fund, collecting credit card contributions through a web ‘donate’ button.

For more coordinated efforts, US state governments could follow the precedent set by the government of the Canadian Province of Quebec which contributed CA$6 million to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) at the 2015 Paris climate summit.

Alternatively, states could establish dedicated state-level ‘international climate solidarity funds’ to collect funding for the Paris financial mechanism. One example of these already underway is the ‘Massachusetts UN Least Developed Countries Fund (MLDCF)’, currently under consideration in the Massachusetts state senate. This fund would be replenished through an income tax refund check-off programme and by a range of other public and private sector contributions, for the benefit of the LDCF.

In terms of demonstrating individual state efforts, and also to provide some much-needed funding predictability, the best way forward would be to create such state funds for the collection of donations from individual residents, city networks, corporate actors, as well as local and state governments.

Report: Seattle pledges support for climate fund barred by Trump

In the case of state governments, this would ideally be though earmarking a small share of some innovative source of revenue – such as carbon taxes or the proceeds from emission trading auctions. For example, a bill currently under consideration in the California State Senate to modify the existing California Cap and Trade Programme envisages the distribution of emission permit auctioning revenue as ‘climate dividends’ to all residents on a per capita basis.

In order to show solidarity with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, California could then, for example, introduce a voluntary climate dividend check-off programme for the benefit of LDCs through the establishment of a California Least Developed Countries Fund, maybe with the additional provision that the climate dividends of the top x per cent of earners are mandatorily checked off in that manner.

Only in the presence of such support for the Paris finance mechanism can state governors truly make the claim: We Are Still In the Paris Agreement.

Benito Müller is managing director of Oxford Climate Policy and convener of international climate policy research at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Felipe Floresca is a climate justice advocate and senior consultant, at Emerald Cities Collaborative. Emilie Parry is an associate fellow at Oxford Climate Policy.

The post If US states are really ‘still in’ Paris, here’s what they need to do appeared first on Climate Home News.

A smiling Modi stood on the stairs of the aircraft that would whisk him to Delhi and the pinnacle of Indian power, but even amid the jubilation some eyebrows were raised. Behind the soon-to-be globally famous waist-coated figure, a purple and blue legend was stamped across the fuselage – “adani”.

As chief minister, Modi had flaunted norms and processes unapologetically, but even some followers and ‘bhakts’ (devotees), were embarrassed by his open display of cronyism with fellow Gujarati and trader-turned-tycoon Gautam Adani, whose remarkable ascension to power and pelf has run parallel with Modi’s own rise to the top.

Those familiar with Modi’s standard electioneering procedure knew that every day of his iconoclastic campaign, Modi had taken off from Ahmedabad in an EMB-135BJ, an Embraer business jet, to address rallies across the country. The plane was owned by Karnavati Aviation, a company in the Adani Group. Modi’s old friend ensured the man he wanted to be India’s prime minister came home to rest each night.

#PM designate #Modi using #Adani plane to come to #Delhi from #Ahmedabad, #IndianExpress, 23/05/2014 pic.twitter.com/Zpkb0pGmLP

— Naveen Gaur (@naveengaur_du) May 23, 2014

In fact, a fleet of three Adani-owned aircraft – the jet and two choppers – had served the leader. The pilot of the Embraer reportedly said it had been bought by the Adani family in anticipation of Modi’s busy election schedule. Adani maintained that Modi was paying for the use of his aircraft. After the electoral commission got sticky about candidate-corporate cronyism and demanded declarations of electoral spending, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it spent Rs 77.83 crore ($12.57 million) on chartering aircraft for its star campaigners.

How much was paid to Adani companies is not known. How much else Adani gained from this high-flying association is however a matter of high public interest and much reported, as is Modi’s keenness to be the transformational leader who will make India the top global industrial destination.

His sights are clearly trained on the world. Modi has built his stature through an international charm offensive, the latest iteration of which was his recommitment to the goals of the Paris climate accord.

Report: Modi and Trump avoid climate change tension on state visit

In his speech announcing the US’ withdrawal from the deal this month, president Donald Trump singled out India, accusing them of rent-seeking to the tune of “billions and billions and billions” on the back of the UN accord. Modi fired back at Trump in a joint announcement with French president Emmanuel Macron – with whom Trump has a short but confrontational history. Modi said India would go “above and beyond” the accord in the fight to stop climate change. On Monday, at a meeting with Trump at the White House, the subject was studiously ignored as the two leaders skirted their differences.

It was a remarkable turnaround for a country that has long been suspicious of the UN climate process. In 2015, Modi told the climate conference that delivered the Paris accord that “the consequences of the industrial age powered by fossil fuel are evident, especially on the lives of the poor”. Now, he said “the world’s billions at the bottom of the development ladder are seeking space to grow”. In other words: the rich world did this, they can deal with it.

Report: Modi and Trump avoid climate change tension on state visit (Photo: Twitter/NarendraModi)

Less than two years later, Modi is positioning India as one of the global climate elite and seeking the investment and plaudits of large economies. In reality, India’s coal development threatens to blow its national climate goals and with it, the international target to hold global warming “well below 2C”.

A report released in April identified 370 coal power stations in planning and construction across the country. If all go into operation, it will be all but impossible to meet, let alone exceed India’s Paris commitment to get 40% of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

“India’s Paris pledges might be met if they built these plants and only ran them 40% of the time, but that’d be a colossal waste of money, and once built there’d be huge incentives to run the plants more despite their contrary climate goals,” said study author Steve Davis, an associate professor at the University of California Irvine.

Modi has gained a reputation as a solar champion but one that lacks nuance. India does have ambitions to install 100GW of solar power by 2022, which the government has incentivised. There is a rub though, even as global and Indian majors – including Adani – show great interest. SA Aiyar, consulting editor of the Economic Times, warned in April that India’s power infrastructure was not ready to absorb its dash for solar. “We should hurry slowly,” he said. An oversupply of electricity – a paradoxical problem that exists in India even with its 200 million people who lack access – could cripple the thermal electricity sector, which India still relies on for supply, and the banks that have underwritten it.

Report: India’s tumbling solar prices ‘a race to extinction’

Despite India’s formal position and even as Modi throws himself behind the Paris agreement, Adani is adamant he is going to construct an enormous coal mine in the Australian outback. In this he has prime minister Modi’s blessing. “We see Adani as a flagship project,” an Indian trade official told the Canberra Times in April. The State Bank of India has signed a memorandum of understanding with Adani for a $1bn loan to the project.

According the company, the mine would see 2.3bn tonnes of coal dug up over a predicted lifetime of 60 years. The most obvious place for that coal to be burnt is in Adani’s fleet of power stations back at home.

Modi tells the world what it wants to hear but his primary constituency is a group of industrial cronies – of whom Adani is first among equals – whose interests are unaligned with actions that address climate change, nor any of India’s plethora of environmental crises.

Gujurat (Image: CC-by-sa PlaneMad/Wikimedia)

The relationship with Modi is far from covert. Adani – along with some other businessmen – regularly accompany the prime minister on state visits. Generally, the pair’s interests are viewed as synonymous. At the peak of Modi’s obstreperous relationship with BJP paterfamilias Lal Krishna Advani, a former mentor the prime minister no longer had use for, Modi’s bête noire and Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, tweeted a telling piece of advice to Advani: drop the ‘v’ from his name and all would be well. The jest was a deadly serious one and a remarkable commentary on Modi; his motivations, the company he keeps and the counsel that prevails with him.

Cronyism has long been a way of life in India. A vast country of 1.3 billion people, sharply stratified with the richest 1% owning 58% of the total wealth, India ranks in the top ten of the Economist’s list of countries with a sizeable crony sector. For the first time in the history of independent India, however, accusations of business cronyism are now regularly levelled at the prime minister’s office, with Gautam Adani the centrepiece of the conversation.

Adani’s business grew 12-fold during Modi’s chief ministership and has grown by leaps and bounds since Modi’s ascension to prime ministership. In 2014, he seemed to emerge from nowhere to enter the ranks of the ten richest Indians as Adani Enterprises moved from trading to everything that mattered. In the year after 13 September, 2013, when Modi was declared the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, shares in Adani Enterprises jumped 265% and turnover grew 20-fold, according to India’s leading business newspaper the Economic Times. Adani’s personal wealth grew 152% in 2014.

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In an interview with Reuters given a month before Modi won the prime ministership, Adani said: “Crony capitalism should not be there. I definitely agree with that. But how you define crony capitalism is another issue… If you are, basically, working closely with the government, that doesn’t mean it’s crony capitalism.” Adani was approached for comment for this article, but did not respond.

A recent investigation by Economic and Political Weekly discovered changes made by Modi’s government to the rules that govern special economic zones had advantaged Adani companies to the tune of Rs 500 crore ($77m). Adani’s ability to secure government connivance under Modi’s has been remarkable, well-documented and long-practiced. Leases of state land in Gujurat to Adani companies, approved by Modi’s state government in the 2000s, have attracted strong criticism. Adani reportedly attained the leases for as little as one cent per square metre, then sublet it to other companies for up to $11 per sq metre.

But Adani failed to see a problem, claiming his companies had improved the properties. “You can say very well that land has been given to Adani,” he told Reuters. “So what? Has Adani taken away land and not developed anything?”

In return, Modi has enjoyed Adani’s unflappable support. After a pogrom killed hundreds of people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat in 2002, Modi’s alleged sanctioning of the killings drew criticism from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) – India’s leading business chamber. Adani jumped to Modi’s defence, setting up a rival chamber of commerce, the Resurgent Group of Gujarat (RGG) and threatening to leave the CII. He, along with some other business interests, put up funds for Modi to host the first Vibrant Gujarat summit for which they hired Apco, a US public affairs consultancy. The summit – known as the “Indian Davos” – became a stepping stone for Modi to court global business. Cowed, the CII eventually apologised to Modi.

Former US secretary of state John Kerry greets Gautam Adani at a meeting of CEOs on the sidelines of the 7th Vibrant Gujarat Summit in 2014 (Photo: State Department)

Modi, whose core political identity is grounded in Hindutva – a distorted version of Hinduism that seeks the hegemony of Hindus in secular India – was cleared of complicity in the killings in 2012, but he has never fully condemned the violence nor apologised for failing to stop it.

Hindutva was Modi’s avenue to power. He was born into a grocer family; grocers in India have traditionally been entrepreneurial but young Modi’s sense of enterprise took him in a different direction. Still in his teens, he quit home and joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, a right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation and the parent of the BJP).

Public speaking, organisation and repartee came easily to Modi. He underwent training at the RSS camp in Nagpur, took charge of its students wing, rallied forces against Indira Gandhi’s State of Emergency eventually becoming the official spokesperson of the BJP in New Delhi in the 1990s. Then, in a move that was quite unprecedented in the RSS circuit, Modi reportedly took a three-month long course in public relations and image management in the US. Modi had already emerged as a demagogue with the Indian masses, now he learnt how to be a resonant voice of reason and reform on the world stage.

Modi has now reached the pinnacle of political power in India, having crushed all opposition parties. This takeover and the accompanying influence of business cronies has meant a “downhill drive for Indian environmental sanctity,” says Dr Dhrubajyoti Ghosh UN Global 500 laureate and winner of the 2016 Luc Hoffmann Award.

“Modi had already emerged as a demagogue with the Indian masses, now he learnt how to be a resonant voice of reason and reform on the world stage” (Photo: Narendra Modi)

At the Paris climate conference, Modi told the world India would enlarge its forests to absorb 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Returning home, Modi directed the environment ministry to loosen its regulations. He wanted to “facilitate a right of passage to big industry in erstwhile inviolable areas,” Ghosh tells Climate Home. Coal mines were exempted from public hearings, irrigation projects proceeded without the proper clearances and the right of tribal village councils to oppose an industrial project was weakened.

“Agricultural workers, agricultural fields, forest dwellers and forests are the low-lying fruit that the government targets with a denial of elementary ecological rights,” says Ghosh.

In Modi’s India, those who seek to defend the powerless find themselves targeted. Greenpeace fell afoul of the government as it opposed the clearing of the sal forests of Mahan (home to more than 14,000 indigenous people in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh) by Mauritius-based coal miner Essar Energy.

“How can protecting our forests be described as anti-national and promoting the economic interests of a [foreign] company like Essar Energy… be called as having nationalistic sentiments?” wondered the Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai, after being stopped from boarding a flight to London to talk to concerned audiences there about NGO efforts to save the Mahan forest. During Modi’s first year in office, nearly 9,000 NGOs that received foreign funding – including Greenpeace India – had their licenses cancelled.

For tribal leaders the stakes are even higher. Kuni Sikaka fought a 12-year battle against the London-headquartered, Indian-owned Vedanta group’s proposed aluminum mine and refinery in her people’s sacred Niyamgiri Hills in the eastern state of Odisha. Last month, Sikaka and her husband were reportedly arrested and paraded at the police station as Maoists, before being released. Police said they had surrendered their struggle.

Campaign image of Kuni Sikaka (Photo: India Resists)

Vedanta boss Anil Agarwal is also amongst the top Modi acolytes. His company was recently blacklisted by Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) – the world’s largest sovereign wealth or state-owned investment fund – citing its poor track record and the “unacceptable risk that your company will cause or contribute to severe environmental damage and serious or systematic human rights violations”.

Agarwal and Vedanta rarely miss an opportunity to endorse Modi’s policies and the government’s support for extractive industries. Agarwal is not alone in his fascination for the prime minister that he and other like-minded industrialists have financed to power; neither is he alone in getting away with violations. The GPFG exclusion list of Indian companies is growing and features operations that have major interests in metals, coal and thermal power.

A Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in March this year severely faulted the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MEFCC), finding companies that violated environment clearance conditions were rarely penalised. The report attributed it to disempowered officials and understaffed offices.

If these shortcomings were sins of omission, there are graver sins of commission, such as a proposed amnesty for companies operating without statutory environmental clearances. The intrepid journalist Nitin Sethi, writing for the Business Standard, put into the public domain news of these confabulations between government and violators.

Perhaps the most egregious fix, given the prominence of the issue and its consequences for Indians’ health, is the government’s attempts to defer a December 2017 deadline for air pollution standards for thermal power plants. Without these, India’s hopes of reducing deadly air pollution from its electricity sector are nixed.

In public, the environment ministry and the power ministry have different stories to tell. The late environment minister Anil Dave, who died in May, told parliament in March that the standards would come into force from 6 December. The reality is that of the more than 400 thermal power plants in India, none have complied with the standards.

In February, the head of the Central Electricity Authority Ravindra Kumar Verma quietly let slip that “completely meeting requirements of revised environmental norms by December 2017 may not be feasible”. More recently, power minister Piyush Goyal told the Financial Times the country’s coal power stations, three-quarters of which are owned by the government, will “take some more time” to comply.

The weakening of India’s environmental institutions has opened the door for development that disregards climate or environmental concerns. According to data compiled by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the rate at which the National Board of Wildlife has rejected industrial projects due to wildlife concerns has fallen from 11.9% under the previous government, to less than 0.01% under Modi.

“The government has reconfigured the National Board for Wildlife to reduce the authority of independent experts; removed the moratorium on new industries in critically-polluted areas; diluted forest norms, making room for industry to encroach on national parks with big budget propaganda on how all this will help the forests, wildlife and overall development,” says Ghosh.

Report: Why is this Indian coal plant getting paid $150m to sit idle? 

Modi wears the liberalisation of environmental laws as a badge of success, bragging about it in newspaper interviews. He and Adani know that sweeping aside environmental protections and ambitions can make industrialists – and by extension their political patronage – very, very rich.

Way back in 1994, before Modi became chief minister, the Gujarat Maritime Board approved a captive jetty at the Mundra port. This was Adani’s chance to break into big money. In the Mundra Special Economic Zone, a concession granted to Adani by the state government, there had been 3,000 hectares of mangroves. Almost overnight, close to two million trees disappeared without a trace.

Residents and NGOs are still seeking reparations for the illegal damage to the environment. But even in this ancient, local dispute, Adani has benefitted from Modi’s rise to government. In 2015, the environment ministry withdrew a demand made by the previous government for a Rs 200 crore ($31m) restoration fund from Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZ), India’s largest private multi-port operator. Environmental clearances issued in 2009 to the company’s waterfront development project at Mundra were extended. Several stringent conditions the ministry had earlier issued were also withdrawn.

More than 30 years after the clearances, Noor Mohammad, who was ejected from his home in Mundra where Adani now has its port and power plant, told the Australian ABC the destruction of tidal mangroves and ash from coal burnt at Adani’s power station had damaged the fishing.

“The Adani project is harming us. Their coal dust and stream discharge are harming us.” Mohammad said his catch was a quarter of what it once was. “There are no fish in the sea water near the coast. All living creatures are dead.” His warning to the Australian audience: be wary of Adani and his powerful friend.

Narendra Modi’s new incarnation as a climate warrior and defender of the Paris climate agreement rubs off quickly, especially when his old ally from home begins talking about his future plans. According to Adani, coal from the Australian mine will expand power generation in India, providing cheap electricity to “100 million people for 100 years”. That is despite Modi’s supposed climate ambitions.

Clearly Adani knows something the ordinary Indian does not.

The post Modi and Adani: the old friends laying waste to India’s environment appeared first on Climate Home News.

Affirmations of the Paris goals have come from thousands of centres of power. State capitols, mayors’ offices and boardrooms have aligned to tell Trump “We Are Still In”. Twelve states, plus Puerto Rico, representing a third of US citizens, have joined the United States Climate Alliance, which commits to meet the carbon cuts the US pledged to the Paris accord.

But those standing by the agreement had, until this week, universally ignored the part of the deal that binds it all together – cash.

The leaders of Germany, France and Italy recognised this in a joint statement released within hours of Trump’s announcement in which they reaffirmed their commitment to the deal “including its climate finance goals”.

But Paris-allies in the US have assiduously ignored this aspect. Even California governor Jerry Brown, lauded as the US’ new climate leader, was silent on cash when he responded to Trump’s Paris withdrawal this month.

On Monday, Seattle city council bucked that trend with official recognition that support for the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) was part of the US’ responsibilities under the Paris deal.

Report: Seattle pledges support for climate fund barred by Trump

Under the Paris Agreement, rich countries agreed to channel funds through the “Financial Mechanism”, a set of institutions including the GCF, to the developing world.

In 2015, the US pledged $3bn to the GCF. With only $1bn of that paid, Trump has now turned off the tap.

“Being in Paris means more than just mitigating your emissions,” says Benito Müller, the convenor of international climate policy research at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. “We need to make sure it becomes common currency that finance is recognised as part of the Paris Agreement.”

Climate finance is important for two reasons.

Firstly, it supports emerging economies like China, India and South Africa – responsible for a growing share of global emissions – in shifting to a cleaner development pathway. If they can be encouraged to meet rampant energy demand from renewables instead of coal, it makes the climate safer for everyone.

Secondly, it goes to protect the poorest, who have done little to cause climate change, from its worst effects. Providing drought-resistant seeds and flood defences goes some way to making up for the damage inflicted by industrialisation.

“The impacts of climate change and the subsequent costs of avoiding it or protecting against it are going to fall more heavily on the poorest countries,” says Müller.

More than one billion people live in the 48 most climate-vulnerable countries. It’s hard to overstate the importance of climate finance – the catch-all term for this flow of cash – in those lands, where poverty multiplies the dangers of a warming world.

That’s why Seattle’s intervention is so important. While it comes with no details about the nature or quantity of “support” it pledges to the GCF, it recognises the aspect of the agreement that brought the developing world on board.

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Industrialised nations have agreed to mobilise $100bn a year in climate finance from 2020 – a figure that some argue wildly underestimates the burden that warming places on the developing world.

“This is not just to feel good,” says Müller, maintaining trust and delivering on financial promises is in the self-interest of rich countries. If that number is not met in three years – and it already looked shaky before Trump’s announcement – poor countries may walk away from the deal. If they decide to fuel their development with coal, “that could swamp all our efforts” and the whole world would suffer the consequences, he said.

If the states and cities that have backed the Paris accord’s emissions cuts were to similarly back the Green Climate Fund, it would go some way to fill the Trump gap. But the GCF is often criticised for its behindhand start to life. It got $10bn worth of start-up pledges ($8bn after the US U-turn), but so far has only disbursed $5m. It’s not running out of money any time soon.

Müller argues that cities and states who want to fully embrace the Paris accord could do better than focus on the GCF. There are a range of institutions set up to process climate finance. In the developing world, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Adaptation Fund have project pipelines waiting for money but are critically under-resourced.

States that have joined the United States Climate Alliance (dark) and others who have expressed support for the Paris accord (light) (Source: Thekiller160)

These small funds act as a “trust weather vane,” says Müller. He has been working since before the Paris agreement was struck to get sub-national governments to pitch into them. It is here, he said, that contributions made by cities and states – inevitably smaller than national sums – can make a real difference immediately.

At the Paris conference, the Canadian province of Quebec gave $6m to the Least Developed Countries Fund. In Massachusetts, legislation that will give taxpayers the option to send a portion of their tax rebates to the same body is now before the state senate.

Now, Trump’s anti-climate stance and recent withdrawal from the Paris accord has energised state governors and city officials, who see this as an issue from which they can stand apart from the president and legitimately claim to be leading the country.

Müller is hoping to harness that energy and ensure that it also washes into climate finance commitments. He has been in contact with the offices of the governors of California and New York, as well as leaders in Quebec and British Colombia.

The sums this constellation of US governments can raise from their payers of rates and taxes will, in all likelihood, come nowhere near filling the $2bn hole left by Trump. But a new flow of money, however symbolic, would speak of solidarity with the rest of the world and more truly reflect the Paris accord.

The post US cities and states back Paris deal but ignore climate finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a resolution passed on Monday, councillors pledged to “uphold its portion of the United States’ former commitment to the Paris climate accord”.

This included a commitment for the city to take the lead on “supporting the Green Climate Fund [GCF]”, to which Trump said the federal government would no longer give money.

The Seattle resolution appears to be unique in its support for the fund. Hundreds of state and local government entities have come forward in recent weeks to restate their own commitment to the Paris deal, including some that have passed official laws or statements. But most have focused on emissions reductions, rather than the obligations of rich countries to the world’s poor.

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Last week, Hawaii’s governor signed a law aligning the state’s emissions strategy with the goals of the Paris deal. On 1 June a coalition of 298 city mayors signed a letter pledging to “intensify efforts to meet each of our cities’ current climate goals, push for new action to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, and work together to create a 21st Century clean energy economy,” the letter said. But no mention was made of the Green Climate Fund.

The We Are Still In coalition of more than 1,000 state governors, mayors, college and university leaders, businesses and investors also recently affirmed its commitments to the Paris deal. But again failed to recognise the importance of climate finance, which was the major reason poor countries were convinced to sign up to a deal to fix a problem they were not responsible for creating.

Alex Lenferna, a climate justice researcher at the University of Washington, said We Are Still In had “overlooked” a key aspect of the Paris accord.

Comment: US cities and states back Paris deal but ignore climate finance

The states and cities in the coalition represented a combined GDP of $6.2 trillion, said Lenferna. “Between them it seems it would be more than possible to fill the gap in the Green Climate Fund created by Trump, if not far surpass it.”

Under the Paris deal, the GCF is the UN’s major instrument for financing climate projects in the developing world using money donated by the countries that have caused climate change.

In a speech earlier this month, Trump said the US was spending a “vast fortune” on the fund. It is the largest donor, having given $1bn. But after Trump’s decision, the US will give no more, despite pledging a total of $3bn in 2015.

Seattle’s GDP is around 1.6% that of the US. On that measure, an equivalent contribution from the city to the US’ outstanding $2bn would be just over $33m. Paris, home of the historic agreement that was struck in 2015, is the only city to have contributed unilaterally to the GCF so far, putting forward $1.3m.

But the council resolution said it would work with concerned communities, companies and local and state governments to fulfil the commitments made by the US government.

Comment: FORE! Trump’s Paris speech was an awful mishit

The only other non-national governments to have contributed to the GCF are three regions of Belgium, where the federal government is often undermined by regional divisions. Flanders, Wallonia and the city region of Brussels have sent $27.85m to the fund, on top of Belgium’s $66.9m national contribution.

The Seattle council resolution also pledged to do its bit on emissions, specifically calling on a local power utility to stop using electricity generated by coal and switch to 100% renewable sources by 2025.

“If the United States government and Donald Trump aren’t going to take climate change seriously, then cities and states will join together at a sub-national level to step up,” said council member Mike O’Brien. “The City will do its part, and I’m asking Puget Sound Energy to do the same.”

O’Brien, who campaigned against Shell’s Arctic oil drilling programme which used the port of Seattle as a base, developed the resolution alongside Seattle Mayor Ed Murray – a Democrat. The Sierra Club and 350.org Seattle were also involved.

The city’s environment office will report back to the council with recommendations for how to meet the resolution’s requirements by the end of the year.

The post Seattle pledges support for climate fund barred by Trump appeared first on Climate Home News.

Now, criticism is pelting the president like a hailstorm of golf balls. From world leaders to corporate CEOs, big-city mayors to citizens from all countries and continents, global support for the climate accord was immediate and overwhelming.

Nonetheless, I’m confident the president’s misfire will not keep us mired in a sand trap – the transition to a clean energy economic future is irreversible and I see evidence of it everywhere I travel.

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Bear with me as I take the golf analogy a step further by illustrating nine holes in the president’s misguided claims about the harm to the US from the world’s move to cleaner energy. While the president has been hanging in the club house with his coal industry friends, the rest of the world is out on the course embracing fast-growing clean energy opportunities. Consider what has happened in just the past few weeks:

• Lured by the lower costs for wind and solar energy and the prospect of creating new jobs, Russia launched its biggest ever-auction for renewable energy projects, which it hopes will lead to 1.9 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. A state-owned nuclear company has also committed to re-tool its factories to make wind turbines.
• China turned on the switch to the world’s largest floating solar farm, powering 15,000 homes, on a lake severely degraded by a nearby coal mine.
• An all-women company in India, Frontier Markets, has sold 35,000 home solar systems, 150,000 solar lamps and 15,000 clean cooking stoves, solar inverters and street lamps in just three months in India’s Rajasthan region.
• One of Apple’s biggest suppliers, Jabil Circuit, has committed to power all of its facilities in China and 22 other countries with 100% renewable energy by the end of next year.
• More than $10 billion of new green bonds were issued in May, bringing this year’s issuances to $45 billion and on pace to break $100 billion for the first time ever. Nigeria and Kenya are expected to issue their first-ever green bonds in the coming months.
• An Israeli company announced plans to build a $20 million, 10-megawatt solar farm in Liberia, part of $1 billion worth of potential solar projects in countries across West Africa.
• Clean energy stocks hardly moved in the wake of the president’s Paris withdrawal. The WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index of companies in renewable and low-carbon energy rose after the announcement.
• For the first time since Bloomberg New Energy Finance began tracking the data, emerging economies in Latin America, Africa and Asia bought more than half of the solar PV panels exported from China, the world’s biggest producer by far. Just two years ago, less than a fifth of China’s PV exports were going to emerging economies.
• And on the same day the president made his Paris exit speech, India’s Power Minister was touring an electric vehicle factory in Germany and extolling the country’s green power surge, as he seeks to deliver on India’s pledge to make every vehicle an e-vehicle by 2030.

I could give you nine more and then another nine. The point is that the economics of renewable energy is increasingly compelling in countries in every region of the world and at every stage of development. Prices have tumbled and more and more companies are pushing to purchase clean energy for their operations and supply chains. More and more investors are diversifying to green investments for the same reasons.

The technology and the economics haven’t changed with the change at the White House. The clean energy transition is underway, the only discussion now is how far and how fast.

Rachel Kyte is CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and special representative of the UN secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All.

The post FORE! Trump’s Paris speech was an awful mishit appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the beginning of June, US president Donald Trump announced he would leave the Paris climate accord and cease funding to overseas climate programmes.

The Ethiopian government, which chairs the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), a group of 48 nations on the front line of climate change, said the US had left the world’s poorest and most fragile communities exposed.

“As the economy that has made the greatest contribution to planetary warming, this signifies an endangerment of the more than one billion people our Forum represents in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific,” said the statement.

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At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, rich nations pledged to shift $100bn worth of investments, grants and loans to climate action in the poor world every year, starting in 2020.

The statement by the CVF chair pointed to the “collective nature” of that commitment. In other words, if the US won’t front the cash, other wealthy nations will need to do more to meet the mark.

“If one country walks away from this promise now that doesn’t change the promise as such,” said Jan Kowalzig, a senior policy advisor to Oxfam’s German branch. “The availability and adequacy of such support has a direct influence on the faith in the process.”

Climate finance has been one of the most fraught aspects of the UN climate talks since their earliest days. Wealthy nations are habitually reluctant to commit to more finance.

But in a statement released in the hours after Trump’s infamous speech on the Paris deal, the leaders of Germany, France and Italy released a statement in support of the agreement, “including its climate finance goals”.

Report: Rich countries oppose bid to drought-proof Ethiopian communities

Gebru Jember Endalew, chair of the Least Developed Countries group, a bloc that negotiates on behalf of the poorest nations at UN talks, told Climate Home the group was “deeply disappointed in president Trump’s decision to renege on commitments to provide climate finance to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries”.

But he added that even before the news from the US, there had been no clear plan for how the rich world would meet the $100bn pledge. The OECD projects publicly-funded climate finance will grow from $43.5bn in 2014 to $66.8bn by 2020. That will be topped up to $100bn by the extra investment that money “mobilises” by making projects more attractive to private capital.

But many poor countries disagree that public and private money can be treated as equal. According to Oxfam, private capital shies away from necessary but unprofitable projects that protect populations from disaster.

“The situation was concerning yesterday, and with Donald Trump’s irresponsible move it has become even more so today,” said Kowalzig.

While the process for withdrawing the US from the Paris accord may take years, Trump immediately ended US contributions to the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) – the flagship initiative for dispersing finance to climate-related projects. The US has contributed $1bn to the fund, but has $2bn outstanding from a pledge it made in 2015.

Report: Obama sends $500m to UN climate fund

Kowalzig said this would not have an immediate impact on the functioning of the fund. “As for now, the GCF has money in its accounts and can continue to approve projects… but of course it is already clear that the missing $2bn are going to be missed, not today but tomorrow, in many parts of the world where poor and vulnerable people are living on the front line of worsening climate change damages.”

“Conservative estimates put the global need at closer to $100 billion a year by 2020, so we are obviously very far from that goal. That means public and private sources will have to be mobilised and fortunately we have seen numerous companies reaffirm their support of the Paris Agreement in recent days. But the finance gap is a significant obstacle to progress and certainly opens the door for new climate leaders to emerge and provide the level of resources needed to tackle the challenge,” he said.

In recent weeks, other countries have indeed laid claim to climate leadership roles. China has been particularly active, conducting diplomacy with the leaders of France, the European Union, India and the governor of California.

Report: China’s Xi promises green ‘belt and road’ investment strategy

China recently announced a vast $900bn overseas infrastructure investment strategy, which the government said would support “green” development. The country is also one of the largest exporters of coal power technology.

Paula Caballero, global director of the World Resources Institute climate programme, said the growth of China’s economy and global ambitions could lead to more money flowing to the developing world. But that it was unlikely the country would count that support towards the $100bn pledge, which is the responsibility taken on by wealthy countries.

“Outside of the negotiations and in the real economy South-South cooperation and flows will likely increase, but explicit and formal pledges by emerging economies in the UNFCCC [UN climate talks] space would be very unlikely. At least not anytime soon,” said Caballero.

The post Poor world calls for climate finance to fill Trump void appeared first on Climate Home News.

In his first budget proposal to Congress, Trump shocked coal advocates by suggesting a steep cut to carbon capture and storage (CCS) research funding. In all, Trump floated a 77% cut, down to $31 million in fiscal year 2018.

Meanwhile, Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal from the Paris climate deal last week has thrown up barriers between US companies and a potentially lucrative international market for CCS projects that some agencies say are necessary to meet climate goals.

The moves contrast with campaign images of Trump touting coal miners as the archetypal American worker and repeated references to “clean coal” on the campaign trail.

Report: Donald Trump says will US leave Paris climate agreement

Since the announcements, coal companies are being deferential to the White House, but quietly shifting their emphasis to Congress to save CCS funding in the budget.

Rick Curtsinger, a spokesman for coal company Cloud Peak Energy, said that Trump has been “extremely supportive of America’s coal miners” and that he “has a difficult task in prioritising issues and balancing the budget.”

But, Curtsinger added in an email: “We are hopeful that Congress will support the further development and commercialisation of the carbon capture technology that we believe is necessary for coal to be able to play a long-term role in providing secure, reliable, and affordable electricity while addressing concerns about CO2 and climate.”

US lawmakers are keen on maintaining research. The White House proposal, after all, is merely that – a proposal. It’s Congress that decides spending levels.

“The president’s budget is a key step in the process, but it is an early one,” said Ashley Berrang, spokeswoman for senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia. “She will use her role on the Senate Appropriations Committee to work to see that those programmes and others that are important to West Virginians are funded at adequate levels.”

Even Democrats have come to the aid of CCS in recent years, heeding calls from non-governmental organisations like the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the technology will be needed to meet climate goals (the IEA predicts CCS will account for one-sixth of carbon emissions reductions by 2050).

Last Congress, a bill to extend tax incentives for CCS attracted diverse co-sponsors, ranging from senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from coal-heavy Kentucky to senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who chairs the Senate Climate Action Task Force.

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Still, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord last week has made matters more difficult for US-based CCS efforts no matter the funding situation, said Josh Freed, vice president of clean energy at centre-left think tank Third Way.

The US has now effectively removed itself from the UN’s Green Climate Fund. Trump has called the body a “slush fund”. But it at least allows CCS projects that US companies could have won contracts to build in the developing world.

Coal companies such as Peabody Energy and Cloud Peak publicly urged the White House to stay in the Paris deal and push for the GCF to include high efficiency, low emission coal-fired power plant projects and to encourage other CCS-friendly policies.

US negotiators are simultaneously pushing for CCS-friendly policies in G20 dialogues, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations. The draft language includes a footnote that reads, “We encourage countries that opt to use carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) to continue to undertake RD&D [Research, Development and Demonstration] and to collaborate on large-scale demonstration projects,” though the final version won’t be released until after the July leaders summit.

The state department would not comment on the G20 discussions. But the ability for the US to pursue diplomatic wins, especially on climate and energy, has been severely weakened by Trump decision to leave the Paris accord.

Similarly, whether the US would be invited to participate in demonstration projects is questionable as it retreats from the international scene. Countries rapidly building CCS-equipped power plants – China and India, for example – are investing in homegrown industries.

Meanwhile, the chances for scaling CCS production domestically remain bleak without a consistent federal research program and natural gas pricing out coal. Trump’s domestic roll back of climate policies also threatens to undermine the commercial case for the technology. Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology told Bloomberg earlier this year that CCS needed tough regulations to be constricting carbon emissions for the projects to make financial sense.

US companies might find themselves locked out of other international financing mechanisms, like the Global Environment Facility. That’s key because the US private sector often won’t pursue riskier CCS projects against state-backed or -subsidised competitors, so developers rely on those institutions, Freed said.

Trump budget: US to stop funding UN climate process

“There is going to be a lot of money invested in that and a lot of money that can be made when carbon capture is commercialised. The US is going to be at a significant disadvantage,” Freed said in an interview. “The international cooperation that gives American countries access to overseas markets is being dismantled.”

But cutting federal CCS spending doesn’t disappoint everyone – even friends of coal.

Some saw government programs buoying CCS as rife with waste and corporate welfare. Tom Pyle, president of the fossil fuel-friendly Institute for Energy Research who ran Trump’s energy department transition, noted electric utility Southern Company’s Kemper power plant has attracted hundreds of millions in federal subsidies only to suffer billions in cost overruns.

“Some of my donors are like, ‘What the hell?,’ the [West Virginia Democratic senator Joe] Manchins of the world are scratching their heads, but at the end of the day the budget reflects the priorities of the administration,” Pyle said in an interview. “It’s not as shocking or surprising to me that these agencies all took a hit because that was sort of the tenor for which we went about making our agency plans.”

Those priorities send a loud message, said Christopher Smith, who led the energy department’s Office of Fossil Energy under president Obama. It signals to federal researchers that their work isn’t valued, potentially feeding a brain drain that’s hard to reverse, Smith wrote recently in Forbes.

Still, CCS spending actually might not stumble significantly, said watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense. The group said the omnibus spending package Congress passed to fund the government through 30 September is likely a prologue for the impending fiscal 2018 budget battle. That bill elevated funding for “transformational coal technologies” while canceling $240 million from other CCS projects.

The post Coal industry begs Congress to save carbon capture from Trump appeared first on Climate Home News.

So, US president Donald Trump is pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, but is prepared to renegotiate to go back in on terms more favourable to the United States.

Is that all clear?

Er… well, no. Clear as mud, actually. I’m not even sure that what the president announced last night can really be described as a ‘withdrawal’.

The post Trump hasn’t actually left the Paris climate deal. Not yet appeared first on Climate Home News.

One reality is that the agreement was always going to reflect, more than determine, whether the world develops a sustainable relationship with the climate system. The language was intentionally “soft” on what countries pledged to do domestically. There was no other way to get nearly 200 sovereign states to the table. And there was little reason to aspire to more.

The forces both driving and constraining worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases are largely outside the top-down influence of some accord. Rising global energy needs and the enduring abundance of fossil fuels are driving fuel demand and emissions growth. Dropping costs of renewable energy, the increasing substitution of natural gas for coal, and a growing focus on energy efficiency in developing economies are slowing emissions.

In full: Leaked EU-China climate statement

But obviously the agreement wasn’t soft enough for Trump, who made no mention of the clear risks from climate change laid out by his secretary of defense, James Mattis, after his confirmation hearing earlier this year, but warned of “massive legal liability” if the United States remained a signatory.

There were going to be setbacks no matter which option Trump chose, and it will take years for the consequences of his decision to play out. He included enough nuance – including the notion of working with Democrats to “negotiate our way back into Paris” or crafting something to replace it – to keep everyone guessing.

And separate from Thursday’s announcement, he had already decided on steps that could undermine international action. For example, his earlier decision to cut funding to United Nations programmes related to the climate agreement (not to mention funding for population programs) is going to have substantial adverse impacts on its own. And if his budget cuts for climate science and programmes aimed at fostering environmental resilience are not altered by congress, there’ll be lots more real consequences not directly related to Paris.

Comment: EU-China climate statement is a manifesto for a new global order

Perhaps the most sobering, largely shrouded, reality is that the nations some have pointed to as the new climate leaders lose some of their luster on closer examination.

China and the European Union have used the Trump moves on climate and energy to assume, at least rhetorically, a leadership role in the public discourse over limiting global warming.

Both have garnered headlines for their aggressive and heavily subsidized pushes to expand wind and solar power generation. But while Chinese and German clean-energy policies and investments have driven the deep drop in the cost of solar panels, the economies of both countries remain heavily dependent on coal and oil.

China, while curbing domestic construction of coal-powered plants, has become a leading lender financing the construction of new coal-burning power plants in developing countries, according to a 2016 study by researchers at Boston University and the Institute for World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

China is clearly past the peak of the domestic coal-burning binge of the early 2000s that fueled its dizzying recent rate of urbanization and industrialization. But it will be burning billions of tons of coal or turning it into cleaner natural gas for at least several more decades. Synthesizing gas from coal is great for curbing urban air pollution, particularly if the gas substitutes for burning coal as a domestic heating and cooking fuel, as is still common in China. But there’s a climate cost, as Princeton researchers have found, because the energy required to synthesize the gas is supplied by, yes, coal, producing more greenhouse gases.

Revkin: It’s time for honesty about climate uncertainty

And Europe, while generally basking in the glow of the Paris Agreement, has been quietly lobbying the Trump administration since February to fast-track approvals of multi-billion-dollar terminals for exporting America’s abundant shale-drilled natural gas as liquefied natural gas, or LNG, across the Atlantic. Who’s the fossil fuel villain there?

In an interview in early April at a conference on sustainable energy in New York City, Maros Sefcovic, vice president of the European Commission for energy policy, said LNG exports were a central focus of meetings earlier in the year in Washington with Trump administration officials. The hope is to cut European dependence on piped Russian gas – and to provide the flexible power generation needed to balance variable output from solar and wind installations.

Later that month, secretary of energy Rick Perry used an appearance at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance meeting in Manhattan to announce the approval of a giant Texas LNG export terminal, owned by Qatar, ExxonMobil and others.

In an onstage discussion with Ethan Zindler of Bloomberg, Perry used a question on Paris to point out the difference between Europe’s climate-focused public statements and its work to gain gas supplies. “We’re out in the public and they’re giving all these speeches about the Paris accord and all the things we’re going to do, and we get into private meetings, it’s like, ‘How do we get that LNG?’,” he said, adding: “Don’t get up on the front end and make all these speeches about how good you’re doing, when the fact of the matter is you’re not.”

Report: Trump desire to renegotiate Paris deal ‘incoherent’ and ‘clumsy’

It’s important to note that expanded gas exports to Europe were also a goal of the Obama administration, both for economic and strategic reasons. President Barack Obama had also urged fracking-averse Europe to do its own energy development, as well. Hillary Clinton, too, took heat from environmentalists during her campaign for her longstanding support of natural gas drilling, and natural gas exports.

In an email, Myles R. Allen, a climate scientist and policy analyst at Oxford University, said Trump’s decision hinted at a bigger issue, simmering well beyond the United States, that would continue to hinder progress – the enduring abundance of, and demand for, fossil fuels.

“The proposal to renegotiate the US terms is interesting – is it just a distraction tactic? Perhaps, but if we really want to put the future of the planet first, we do need to think about how to make the agreement both more effective and more acceptable to nations with substantial fossil reserves – or the US won’t be the last one to jump ship,” he said.

It is worth noting that the site of next year’s round of annual climate change negotiations, announced Thursday by the United Nations, will be Katowice, Poland – a city in the heart of the Polish coal belt. Poland signed the Paris Agreement along with the rest of the European Union last October, but only after gaining concessions allowing its coal use to continue.

This article first appeared on Pro Publica.

The post EU-China: New ‘climate leaders’ are also enamoured of fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking a day after the US left the Paris agreement, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, a former German SPD MP and chair of the Bundestag’s environment committee, described Trump’s move as a self-inflicted wound that put US industry on the losing side of history.

“He did this stupid act because he believes that coal is good, but it is the game-loser – as you can see from the stock market,” Weizsäcker said. “I suspect he is a loser president and Americans are going to learn it the hard way.”

The EU climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, yesterday rejected the notion – first raised by the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy – of imposing sanctions against carbon-intensive US goods that undercut the Paris pact. Weizsäcker though was warm to the notion.

Report: Trump desire to renegotiate Paris deal ‘incoherent’ and ‘clumsy’

“It would, symbolically, be a lovely idea,” he said. “I don’t know if it is WTO-compatible, and it would be seen by the Trump administration and many Americans as a primitive revenge. It could actually make nationalist feeling in America stronger, not weaker. But I find it a lovely idea.”

The Club of Rome brings together former heads of state, government officials, diplomats, scientists and business leaders to mull issues of climate change and global economy.

The club has spawned its own Bilderberg-style conspiracy meme and is viewed as a “Gaia-worshipping” forum of the global elite by alt-right websites such as Breitbart. 

Weizsäcker is an easy target in that regard – a biology professor, best-selling environmental author and nephew of the former German president, Richard von Weizsäcker. But he is no pushover.

Trump’s withdrawal “is so absurd it creates a pre-revolutionary situation, including in America,” he says. “The Californian hi-tech industries will feel extremely frustrated by a president who honours dinosaurs and punishes innovators.

Full story: Donald Trump’s US leaves Paris climate agreement

“The friendship between Europe and Asia will be enhanced by Trump’s lonely decision too, because both will immediately realise that he is a fool, and then seek different alliances,” he added.

This is the sunny side of the street leading away from Paris. Weizsäcker airily relates the contents of an email he received from a senior UNFCCC official earlier in the week, expressing a wish that Trump leave the climate process as soon as possible to prevent his nominated delegates sabotaging negotiations any further.

But there is real fear of a global backsliding that could unravel the carefully crafted consensus on trying to limit planetary warming to 2C are difficult to dismiss, given the length of time it took for 196 nations to agree the Paris pact.

“There is a bit of a danger that some ‘fossil governments’ will now feel encouraged to leave the Paris agreement,” Weizsäcker concedes, “but technological trends are moving towards decarbonisation, making the selling of coal from Poland or oil from Saudi Arabia, much less profitable. The rewards such fossil governments expect will be minimal and the penalties will be big. So they will be left behind.” 

The post Club of Rome president: climate sanctions on US ‘a lovely idea’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under the Paris Agreement, the earliest a party can give notice of its intention to quit is 4 November 2019, three years after the deal entered into force. That decision will not take effect until 4 November 2020, the day after the next US presidential election. Trump rejected the faster, but more legally complicated, option of withdrawing from the overarching UN climate convention.

Susan Biniaz, a former top climate lawyer for the state department who quit after Trump’s election, described his stance as “incoherent” in an email to Climate Home. “We wouldn’t even be out until Nov 2020, so how would we re-enter? It might just be a clumsy way of saying he’s leaving the door slightly open to not actually withdraw when the time comes in 2019.”

Excerpt from the Paris Agreement setting out the terms for withdrawal

For the next four years, the US can continue to attend international climate talks. If negotiators wanted to alter the substance of the Paris Agreement in that time, they would have to request an agenda item and get other countries to accept it.

After a speech that attacked China and India, leaving the US in a small club of Paris refuseniks with Nicaragua and Syria, Trump’s prospects of winning such acceptance look slim.

“It was a really divisive and unnecessarily isolating speech,” said Farhana Yamin, founder of non-profit network Track 0 and a veteran of climate talks. “This is such a foreign policy disaster, because it alienates everyone in the rest of the world.”

The government leaders of Germany, France and Italy swiftly declared that the Paris Agreement “cannot be renegotiated”.

Christiana Figueres, who led the UN climate body through Paris, told reporters in a press call the US could ask to re-enter the agreement after 2020. But she quashed the idea the US could demand different terms.

“This is in essence a multilateral agreement,” she said. “That’s why it took six years to bring together and no one country can unilaterally change the conditions.”

Her successor Patricia Espinosa agreed in a tweet, saying the “historic treaty… cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single party”.

#ParisAgreement, a historic treaty signed by 194 & ratified by 147 countries, cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party. https://t.co/FEz1JsVmk0

— Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) June 2, 2017

Climate Weekly: Sign up for your essential climate news update

It is unclear what Trump would wish to change, given that the existing framework does not penalise the US for breaking promises made by predecessor Barack Obama.

Trump has already started unpicking Obama-era policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, framing them as threats to fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. He also axed financial support to developing countries from the budget.

“The concerns he raises do not even require renegotiation, even if other countries were willing to do so – which I doubt they would be,” said Biniaz. “If he’s concerned about an unfair [emissions] target, he can change it unilaterally. No other country’s permission is required. And financial contributions are voluntary, so that doesn’t require renegotiation either.”

While there is no formal enforcement mechanism for the Paris Agreement, Trump’s withdrawal has diplomatic repercussions.

In a video statement that has had more than a million views, French president Emmanuel Macron described the decision as “a mistake, both for the US and for our planet”.

Bypassing the federal government, he appealed directly to US citizens disappointed by Trump’s action to work with France on “concrete solutions” to climate change.

The post Trump desire to renegotiate Paris deal ‘incoherent’ and ‘clumsy’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU-China joint statement on climate change, to be released after their summit in Brussels today but leaked to Climate Home, is something else entirely.

Using forceful language that is rarely seen in documents of this type, over the course of 10 pages the EU and China set out a cooperation agreement that may shape the course of global climate politics for years to come.

The statement starts with the fundamentals: the prosperity of the EU and of China depends on climate stability. “Climate change is exerting increasing stress on ecosystems and infrastructure to the point of threatening hard-won developmental gains”, they say. “Climate impacts on water, food and national security have become a multiplying factor of social and political fragility, and constitute a root cause for instability, including the displacement of people.”

Read: Leaked EU-China climate statement – in full

Climate change is now ‘big league’ politics as a result. For years, climate was a worthy but marginal issue, to be debated by environment ministers rather than by heads of government. The fight over climate at the recent G7 summit in Taormina shows just how far that has changed.

The political significance of the Paris Agreement now goes beyond climate alone to the survival of the multilateral rules-based system itself. The EU and China write: “The Paris Agreement is proof that with shared political will and mutual trust, multilateralism can succeed in building fair and effective solutions to the most critical global problems of our time.”

The EU and China now see climate and clean energy becoming “a main pillar of their bilateral partnership”, including on economic matters.

With the US self-marginalising, the EU and China want to write the rules to the global clean economy (soon to be known simply as “the global economy”). The EU-China statement commits to widespread cooperation in areas such as energy labelling, product efficiency regulations, zero-emissions vehicle rules and clean energy regulation and market design.

If that sounds technical and insignificant, think again. China is the world’s biggest exporter with a fast-growing consumer base; the EU (with its 500 million consumers) is the world’s largest trading block. By cooperating on standards and flexing their regulatory muscles, the EU and China will shape products, markets and supply chains internationally – including in Trump’s America.

The statement also positions the EU and China as a global clean technology innovation lab. Independently of Trump’s decision on the Paris Agreement, he is also seeking to de-fund leading clean innovation programmes such as ARPA-E.

By contrast, the EU and China are re-committing to “Mission Innovation”, a (previously) US-backed initiative to double research and development spending in clean energy – a sign they are ready to not only fill the gap but also take the benefits from clean technology innovation.

EU and China kick off the first ministerial Energy Dialogue focused on clean energy and the implementation of the #ParisAgreement. #EUChina pic.twitter.com/5e1bjYA2Hm

— Miguel Arias Cañete (@MAC_europa) June 2, 2017

Perhaps most significantly, the EU and China are not just standing by existing commitments under the Paris Agreement, but are proposing to deepen them. Current Paris pledges do not add up to a pathway that will keep the world to ‘well-below 2-degrees’ of warming: they need to be ratcheted up over time.

With an obstructive US administration in place, many have worried that momentum for countries to increase this ambition would be lost. Instead, the EU and China have committed to “forge ahead with further policies” and strengthen ambition, to publish new mid-century decarbonisation plans by 2020 and to agree new goals for climate financing for developing countries through until 2025.

Deep cooperation is proposed across a range of international forums, from the G20 to the Kigali Agreement on HFCs to the UNFCCC – with no mention at all of the US.

They won't be laughing at us anymore pic.twitter.com/4Mzkbnjfqy

— Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) June 2, 2017

When George Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, it led to a lost decade in climate diplomacy. When the red lines of the US and developing countries failed to meet at Copenhagen, it was another 5 years before progress resumed. An agreement between the US and China then laid the groundwork for the Paris Agreement to succeed.

This time round, the EU and China are putting forward a different message: global climate action will proceed with or without the Trump administration on board.

Update:

Reports are coming in that the EU and China will not publish a final summit statement due to disagreements over trade. Despite apparent consensus on the widely-trailed EU China leaders’ statement on climate change, the text will not be formally adopted.

Climate change is now firmly in the top level of global politics, and that means the stakes and the risks are higher. Agreement of the climate text became entangled in the broader political relationship, while minor initiatives such as on food labelling were allowed to progress.

The EU and China did, however, announce a new climate summit to be held along with Canada in September. The realignment of the global climate regime continues.

Jonathan Gaventa is a director at the E3G think tank.

The post EU-China climate statement is a manifesto for a new global order appeared first on Climate Home News.

Trump argued that the US was getting a raw deal from the accord. He, like most congressional Republicans and conservatives off Capitol Hill, contended the US would sacrifice too much while competitors like China and India face less stringent, immediate restrictions.

Officially, Trump said the US would “cease implementation” of the Paris agreement. Payments to the Green Climate Fund, which Trump called a “scheme to redistribute wealth outside the United States,” will not proceed — though the GOP-controlled Congress likely wouldn’t have approved that spending regardless. Trump said he’d try to renegotiate better terms for the US or a separate deal, but he’d be “fine” if the effort failed.

“The reality is withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate,” Trump said during a speech at the White House Rose Garden, adding that the Paris agreement “hamstrings the United States while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries.”

Many analysts said the decision heralds waning American influence and soft power on the world stage. The vacuum leaves nations like China ascendant, though some fear the US departure will stymie ambition from other nations that must drastically cut emissions to avoid catastrophic warming.

Report: Leaked EU-China climate statement – in full

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said: “Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris agreement as one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any president.”

While the US had previously pledged to cut emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, it was unlikely to get there under Trump whether or not it remained in the Paris process. That’s because the Trump administration has already begun unwinding the Clean Power Plan – regulations to curb power plant emissions – and achieving the aspirational 26-28% cut would have required additional action. Under Trump, such measures are farfetched.

A White House official told reporters Trump’s legal team recommended exiting Paris because it interpreted any adjustments would have to increase emissions cuts. Trump, however, was inclined to walk back the Obama pledge.

“The president’s legal team thought the best, more legal way to address it was to just get out,” the official said. The official declined to offer a specific emissions target for which the administration would aim.

Under UN rules the process of leaving the agreement will take the rest of Trump’s term in office, although US’ efforts to meet its commitments could cease immediately – in reality they ended when Trump was inaugurated.

The fact that the US stays within the overarching UN treaty is important as it would allow a future president to rejoin the Paris agreement without needing to gain senate approval – a feat that has been beyond previous presidents.

While Trump couched his reasons for leaving in economic terms, a number of major corporations made last-minute pleas to remain in the Paris deal. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla Motors, resigned from Trump’s advisory council following the Paris departure, but others industry titans – such as General Motors CEO Mary Barra – announced they’d remain on board in hopes of influencing future administration climate policy.

Statement on the US' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreements. #parisagreementhttps://t.co/T4XOjWZW0Q

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 1, 2017

International observers reacted with defiance. Leaders of major economies China, India, the EU, Germany and France have all stood strongly by the accord in recent weeks. Others have threatened retaliation through trade and other multilateral agreements.

Immediately after the announcement, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Paolo Gentiloni, released a joint statement that said: “We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies.”

LIVE: Trump withdraws from Paris climate deal

The post Donald Trump says US will leave Paris climate agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

The address starts at 3pm ET/8pm BST. You can watch it below. Our team of Megan Darby and Zack Colman are in the US and will bring you quick analysis and reaction.

Trump has been heavily tipped to take the US out of the Paris accord. But the ways in which that could happen are many. The mercurial president could also flip his decision and stay within the accord.

Either way, the US has already left the fold of nations who are trying to solve this problem. Striking out alone, lead by a man who either doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about the impacts of climate change on the global future.

Send your comments to km@climatehome.org or @karlmathiesen.

Summary

• Trump made speech that betrayed poor understanding of the accord from which he has decided to withdraw. Instead he constructed a fantasy deal that was at once “non-binding” and unfairly punitive on the US.
• The president floated an idea that the US would reenter the deal, but renegotiate its terms. An idea immediately quashed by the three most powerful European leaders and the UN’s climate body. Megan Darby will have more on that for you soon.
• He railed against the Green Climate Fund, which he said was a programme to redistribute US wealth to poorer countries and accused Barack Obama of pinching money from US counter-terrorism money to supply it.
• The world’s reaction has been anger, resolve and confusion in equal measure.
• The live blog will wrap up here. Read Zack Colman’s full story.

1735 ET – On Twitter

“This is not the future we want for our children,” said French president Emmanuel Macron.

Statement on the US' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreements. #parisagreementhttps://t.co/T4XOjWZW0Q

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 1, 2017

https://twitter.com/EPAScottPruitt/status/870369891211202560

.@realdonaldtrump's withdrawal from #ParisAccord is an abdication of American leadership. Rejection of both science & economic opportunity.

— Ernest Moniz (@ErnestMoniz) June 1, 2017

Today's decision is disappointing & confusing for those that support US leadership. Our own commitment to #ParisAgreement will never waiver. pic.twitter.com/wvnr7upPqa

— Dr. Hilda C. Heine (@Senator_Heine) June 1, 2017

Every foreign leader attacking Pres Trump over leaving Paris Accord -further proof the deal was one sided and better for foreigners than US

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 1, 2017

Today's decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world. #ParisAgreement

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) June 1, 2017

1710 – ET Leaders of France, Germany and Italy: Paris cannot be renegotiated

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have released a joint statement saying the Paris agreement cannot be renegotiated, Reuters has reported.

“We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” said Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Paolo Gentiloni.

1700 ET – What does this all mean?

Climate Home’s Megan Darby has this thoughtful first take on a befuddled and befuddling speech.

Donald Trump kept the climate world guessing for months about his stance on the Paris Agreement. Today’s self-contradictory speech raises as many questions as it answers.

Here is what we know: Trump intends to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. There is a legal provision for doing so. Three years after the deal came into force, which was 4 November 2016, any party can give notice of their intention to quit. That takes effect a year later, on 4 November 2020. Not incidentally, that is one day after the next presidential election, teeing up the question of re-entry as a political football for the campaign.

During that period, the US can take part in the negotiations, as countries work to develop a rulebook for the Agreement. Trump made clear he plans to cease implementation of the deal, which he describes in the same sentence as “non-binding” and “draconian”. Go figure.

There was no mention of pulling out of the overarching UN climate convention, a quicker but more legally complicated way to leave.

Here comes the confusing part: Trump says that he will negotiate to re-enter the pact on more favourable terms to America or strike an entirely new deal. How can the US re-enter a deal it hasn’t left yet? The Paris Agreement took decades to thrash out. Why would the rest of the world re-open it now? What terms does he hope to improve? The US carbon-cutting and finance pledges were always voluntary.

Once again, Trump played to his base, promising to protect American jobs in coal, cement, iron and steel. In a hostage to fortune, he said *all* forms of American energy would be needed to achieve annual growth of 3-4%. It is doubtful whether watering down climate regulations can revive coal regions suffering from shale gas competition and automation. If Trump cannot deliver on his economic target, voters may well ask what this was all for.

1654 ET – UNFCCC says agreement cannot be renegotiated

The UN’s climate body has released a statement saying it regretted the decision and “notes the announced intention to renegotiate the modalities for the US participation in the agreement. In this regard, it stands ready to engage in dialogue with the United States government regarding the implications of this announcement”.

“The Paris Agreement remains a historic treaty signed by 194 and ratified by 147 counties. Therefore it cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party.”

1634 ET – “I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility”

Zack Colman grabbed a couple of people’s thoughts on his way to and around Boston today.

Mike Hicks, from St. Mary’s County, Md., 43, contractor, retired marine, no kids, just traded in his truck for a hybrid because it gets better gas mileage. Colman interviewed him on a bus in Boston. He said he thought the problem was not for the government to solve.

“I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to try to change or help the environment. We in America when we see something bad we’ve learned to think, oh, it’s the government’s fault. I think we need to be taught, like in school, how to take care of the environment so we don’t get to this point where we have to ask the government to tell us what to do.”

“We weren’t taught the effect of the fossil fuels, the impact it has on the climate. Because I do believe the climate is changing due to us excessively using, whether it be transportation methods or throwing away things that can be recycled. Those are contributing factors. Asking the government to take care of it, well, it’s still going to come back on us to be doing it.”

“Over time, mankind has kind of evolved with change in the environment. I feel like we’re probably changing the environment quicker than we can evolve, so to speak. … I don’t think we as a people are changing enough. I think it’s going to get to a point where it’s too late.”

Matt (declined to give last name) from Boston, was on an airplane to Boston, 30. He is a government worker.

“It speaks a lot to stand with other countries. It must take a really strong opinion to step back from that kind of table. It’s not good for the environment. I don’t know exactly what the downside [to staying in Paris] is for the country, but somebody should be explaining that to me pretty soon, right?”

1625 – ET Full report now live

Read Zack Colman’s report on Trump’s speech here.

1620 – ET “Decision harms the US most of all” – German environment minister

Germany’s environment minister Barbara Hendricks said she regretted Trump’s decision but that “climate action will continue and will not be stopped by this decision”.

“The damage this causes to multilateral cooperation is even more severe than the damage done to international climate action… By leaving, the US administration is throwing away a precious opportunity for forward-looking development in the United States. This decision harms the United States itself most of all,” said Hendricks.

1614 – ET “Media’s epic climate blunder”

Media Matters have released this important note: “During Trump’s June 1 speech, all four major networks interrupted their scheduled programming to take Trump’s speech live. The same networks devoted 0 total minutes to discussing the climate implications of a Trump presidency on their Sunday and evening newscasts during the campaign.”

It’s no wonder most US voters care relatively little about climate change.

1605 – ET Pruitt ends address

Scott Pruitt, the man who has perhaps pushed Trump hardest to make this decision praises his unflinching fortitude in standing up for the US people. And then it’s over. More to come from us though as we try to work out what this renegotiation could look like.

1555 ET

Trump:

The same nations that are asking us to stay in the agreement are the same nations that have cost us billions through lax trade practices and unpaid contributions to Nato

We don’t want leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be, they won’t be.

Green Climate Fund is a system of global wealth redistribution, he says. “The Green Fund would likely obligate the US to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars… including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism.” That’s the $500m appropriated by Barack Obama from the State Department budget in January. “Not good,” says Trump.

1545 ET

He says the accord blocks the development of clean coal in the US. Trump’s latest budget slashed funding for research into coal technology.

Trump appears to accept science of climate change by saying that the Paris accord will only shave 0.2C off global warming.

US will work with Democratic leaders to enter back into Paris on terms that are acceptable. Or negotiate a separate deal – presumably a special agreement for the US. Which is actually what the Paris accord is.

1538 ET – US to leave Paris accord then “reenter” on new terms

Trump says the US will leave the “non-binding Paris accord” effective immediately – applause and hooting from the crowd – but begin negotiations to renter the Paris accord on terms that are acceptable to the United States – silence.

“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.” Citing China’s ability to grow its emissions until 2030 and the shifting of climate finance to the poor world.

1530 ET – Mike Pence introduces Trump

“With this action today Donald Trump is choosing to put American workers first.”

Trump to follow.

1508 ET – “The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans”

Trump is running late for the 3pm start.

Meanwhile the White House has released talking points to conservative groups and those wunderkinds at Politico have found it. It’s a greatest hits of complaints about the paucity of the deal for the US. All of which ignore the key fact that the deal was utterly voluntary.

One key line though, which is likely to be a fig leaf in Trump’s speech, is this: “The U.S. is ALREADY a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader; we can reduce our emissions and continue to produce American energy without the Paris Accord.”

Somehow I think this is unlikely to appease environmentalists.

WH talking points released to conservative groups ahead of Paris withdrawal via @politico "The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans" pic.twitter.com/cFzO4Yn8BH

— Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) June 1, 2017

1457 ET – Confirmation from senate staff

Climate Home’s Zack Colman has it from GOP senate environment and public works committee spokesman Mike Danylak that Trump has informed them that he will leave the accord. Live stream scheduled in two minutes.

1448 ET – International reaction predicted to be fierce

Germany: Today Politico reported that Martin Schulz, who is challenging Angela Merkel for the chancellorship, vowed trade retaliation against Trump over. Merkel has also raised the prospect of degraded relations.

EU-China: Leaked documents, only in full on Climate Home, show a surprisingly vociferous bilateral statement from the world’s second and third largest economies. They will deepen their cooperation on the issue they said.

Meanwhile, president of the European Council Donald Tusk told Trump on Twitter that he would be changing “the (political) climate for the worse”.

 1417 ET – Congress informed of withdrawal – CNN

CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta hears Congress has been informed. We’ll try to confirm this, but all will be revealed very soon.

Hill source: WH has informed members of Congress that President Trump will pull out of Paris climate agreement.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 1, 2017

1409 ET – Invite list a give away

The list of invitees to the Rose Garden announcement should give you an indication of the way this is going to go.

Politico reports that the list includes Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, will be there with staff. Competitive Enterprise Institute director Myron Ebell, who worked on Trump’s transition team on energy policy and is a long time enemy of the UN climate process will attend. See Climate Home’s interview with him in Paris. The Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner and other top dogs.

All three of these organisations has campaigned hard against Paris. Trump would be unlikely to invite them for anything but total victory.

The post As it happened: Trump says US will withdraw from Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

He will speak in the Rose Garden at the White House. Just seven months ago, Barack Obama stood in the same place and hailed an “historic” day as the Paris agreement entered into legal force.

Trump is heavily tipped to take the US out of the international climate accord – including by sources Climate Home’s Zack Colman spoke to in Washington on Wednesday.

Report: Trump told Pruitt to make plan to leave Paris deal, stay in UNFCCC

One source told Colman the president had told his environment chief Scott Pruitt begin preparing a plan that involved the US staying within the overarching UN climate treaty, but pulling out of the Paris deal. That’s significant for future reentry.

But the machinations of the White House and its rival factions have continued to the last, with secretary of state Rex Tillerson meeting Trump on Wednesday afternoon. Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil chief executive, has argued that the US would be better to push its reinvigorated pro-fossil fuel agenda from within the agreement.

Follow: @ClimateHome, @climatemegan , @zcolman , @KarlMathiesen

Don’t expect today to be the end of speculation. The permutations of how Trump could manage the withdrawal are many. As are the differing stresses on the agreement if the US does remain a party.

Whatever Trump announces will answer one question, but likely throw up many more – this president is not in the certainty business.

Join our live blog, with Zack Colman stateside and myself in London, from around 2pm ET (7pm BST) for quick analysis and decoding of what is likely to be a cryptic speech.

The post Trump schedules Paris announcement for 3pm Thursday appeared first on Climate Home News.

Trump told Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, a key advocate for exiting the United Nations deal, to begin an exit plan, the source said. The strategy does not include leaving the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which would have been a quicker, but more drastic, way to bow out of international climate dealings.

As an international treaty, the UNFCCC requires senate approval for the US to join. If the US were to withdraw from the full convention, any future reentry into the Paris agreement could be held up by a hostile upper house.

The White House still hasn’t confirmed whether Trump will yank the US out of the global pact to join Nicaragua and Syria as the only non-signatories. But multiple reports now cite White House sources 

Trump will meet Wednesday afternoon with secretary of state Rex Tillerson, according to the state department’s public schedule. Tillerson has pushed for Trump to remain in the deal and his department takes lead on climate negotiations.

Report: Trump: Paris Agreement decision will ‘make America great again’

Many in conservative circles outside the White House are still in wait-and-see mode. Some have cautioned that Tillerson could sway Trump in their meeting, or that the slower, four-year exit process for Paris would enable a renegotiation on Trump’s terms.

Some corporations have been pushing Trump to stay in the deal as well – even fossil fuel firms, such as ExxonMobil Corp., where Tillerson was previously chief executive. Appealing to Trump’s businessman’s sensibilities, they argued the administration could secure better terms for US companies by remaining involved.

C2ES, an NGO, said it would run full page ads in Thursday’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal that feature 25 US companies urging the president to make a last minute decision to stay inside the Paris accord “for the good of the economy”.  It will be the ninth time the ads have run in recent weeks.

While there’s been an internal administration struggle over whether to stay or leave Paris, few in the stay camp encouraged continued participation under the current terms.

One emerging strategy involved rejecting the non-binding 26-28% emissions cut below 2005 levels president Barack Obama promised by 2025 through a Senate vote while remaining in the broader Paris framework.

Companies in the coal mining sector, which Trump has vowed to revive, took a similar tack. Peabody Energy, for example, said on May 19 that it would “support the decision” to withdraw and that staying would require “multiple improvements”, such as the US greenhouse gas emissions target being “substantively modified”.

The National Mining Association also endorsed withdrawal, as did 22 GOP senators. That could help give Trump political cover for the move – as they represent Appalachian, midwest and west voters that backed Trump – even when large portions of corporate America have endorsed the Paris deal.

Regardless of the US plans for Paris, the nation was likely to fall well short of the goal Obama laid out in 2015 after Trump and Pruitt had taken the knife to many of the last administrations key climate initiatives.

The Trump administration allegedly wants to exit Paris to avoid potential litigation that could upend its unraveling of the Clean Power Plan, Obama-era regulations to limit carbon emissions from power plants. Reaching the US target for Paris is unlikely without that rule. Even then, additional greenhouse gas-restraining policies are necessary, and the Trump administration isn’t poised to pursue them.

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“While it may be hoped that the good work being done on US emissions reductions by states, cities, businesses, and individuals will continue, the reduction of federal support for [research and development] on clean and efficient energy, the abandonment or weakening of federal regulations aimed at reducing emissions, and the (continuing) refusal to put a price on carbon emissions, despite the recommendations of leading Republicans from past administrations, will make it extremely difficult to meet the emissions-reduction targets to which the United States committed itself in Paris,” John Holdren, Obama’s former science and technology adviser and currently a professor at Harvard University, said in an email.

US lawmakers, academics and others reacted to reports under the impression that Trump’s decision to leave Paris was final and imminent.

“Disappointed by early reports that the US will join Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not party to the #ParisAgreement,” tweeted Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who co-chairs the House Climate Solutions Caucus that includes 20 GOP and 20 Democratic lawmakers. He added, “No matter @POTUS’ decision on #ParisAccord I’ll continue working with Rs & Ds in Congress to promote clean energy & sound enviro policies.”

Richard N. Haass, a former state department official under President George W. Bush who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Twitter: “taking US out of Paris pact unwarranted-we set our own ceilings, little effect on eco growth-& unwise as signals US no longer ready to lead”.

The post Trump told Pruitt to make plan to leave Paris deal, stay in UNFCCC appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking at a UN energy forum in Vienna, Piyush Goyal said: “The road from Paris to today has been somewhat bumpy. We will have to sort that out. But I’d like to reassure each one of you here today that India stands committed to its commitments made at Paris irrespective of what happens in the rest of the world.”

The comment aligns India with statements from leaders around the world in response to the threat of a US withdrawal from the Paris accord.

In a call on Tuesday, Chinese president Xi Jinping and the president-elect of France Emmanuel Macron pledged to defend the international climate process.

Former president Barack Obama also praised the agreement this week in a speech in Italy.

Goyal’s remarks were greeted by “resounding applause”, said Paula Caballero, the head of climate at the World Resources Institute.

“This is proof of India’s decisive leadership on climate change as they embrace the clean energy revolution to power their homes and create jobs. We live in a vibrant, multipolar world and that is what will enable us to deliver on the promise we made in Paris,” she said.

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A White House meeting on the future of US participation, scheduled for Tuesday, was postponed. US president Donald Trump is not now expected to decide until after a G7 summit 26-27 May whether to pull out of the pact or stay in.

An Australian lawmaker from the ruling Liberal Party, Zed Seselja, has hinted a US withdrawal could affect Canberra’s stance. “If they were to pull out obviously that would change the nature of that agreement,” he told Sky News, as reported in the Guardian.

Under the agreement struck in 2015, India pledged to reduce the amount of carbon pollution its economy creates per unit of GDP, a measure known as emissions intensity, and limit deforestation. It also committed to increase its share of clean electricity generation to 40% by 2030.

Despite a rapidly growing renewable energy sector, the Indian economy will remain underpinned by coal, Goyal told the Indian parliament in April. He said that the Paris agreement “does not in any way stop the government or any country from meeting its energy needs from whatever sources of energy one may choose”.

Leadership! "India stands to commitments it made in Paris irrespective of what others do" P Goyal, Min Energy India #VEF2017 #ParisAgreement pic.twitter.com/JuufpyfkIb

— Paula Caballero (@PaulaCaballeroC) May 11, 2017

Spoke about India's record breaking progress on energy access at Vienna Energy Forum and urged the developed world to meet its commitments. pic.twitter.com/vfRPQjnwCK

— Piyush Goyal (मोदी का परिवार) (@PiyushGoyal) May 11, 2017

India stands by its Paris commitments irrespective of what happens in other parts of the world – an inspiring @PiyushGoyal #VEF2017 pic.twitter.com/2QC2HN2G1y

— Barbara Buchner (@bbuchner13) May 11, 2017

#India will step up to Paris commitments; the time for action is now &we commit to our #energy targets to meet needs of our people #VEF2017 pic.twitter.com/ORW3tWZKO4

— UNIDO (@UNIDO) May 11, 2017

The post India reaffirms Paris climate commitments appeared first on Climate Home News.

The debate is not between hawks calling for immediate reductions to heat-trapping emissions, and doves advocating for more gradual decarbonisation. It’s not about whether we should deploy cheap low-carbon technologies as advocated by the International Energy Agency, or invest in R&D for “energy miracles”, as favoured by Bill Gates. Nor does it concern the choice between an economy-wide carbon tax favoured by some Republicans, or the politically expedient regulations and subsidies introduced by former President Obama.

It’s not even between those who accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, and the extreme wing of fossil fuel lobby, who don’t. As climate scientists like to tell us, “the debate is over”, but not in the way they think.

The only White House climate debate is between those who want to use the Paris climate agreement as a branding and lobbying opportunity, and those who favour leaving it altogether.

Those latter include the likes of Steve Bannon, senior advisor to the president, Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and much of the coal lobby. This group argue that the US should unilaterally withdraw from the Paris accord.

Pruitt’s main gripe is that China and India allegedly have no obligations under the agreement until 2030. In fact, both have made commitments, which are rated on a par with the US pledge by Climate Action Tracker, an independent authority. Pruitt’s comments only make sense if you ignore that the average US citizen emits 10 times the CO₂ and gets 35 times the GDP share of the average Indian.

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Another argument for immediate withdrawal relates to the legal nature of the US pledge to the agreement – to lower emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. Pledges can be changed by national governments at any time. However, a caveat in the wording suggests that this could only happen to enhance the level of ambition. If the US could not weaken its commitment this could be used in court to protect the Clean Power Plan and other aspects of former president Obama’s climate legacy. The legal validity of this position is hotly contested.

The proponents of remaining in the agreement include the president’s daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, as well as secretary of state Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. This group are supported by the drilling lobby, including Exxon Mobil and Shell.

Tillerson argues that the US is better off with a seat at the table. Even a company with a long history of climate denial, Peabody Coal, wants the US to stay in so that it can promote the continued use of coal, albeit using carbon capture and storage.

Notably, there were no voices from these angels when US climate policy was dismantled over the past months. No one opposed executive orders that enabled drilling on public land, vulnerable habitats, and the Arctic, or an order to rescind the Clean Power Plan. Nor did they object when policies to build resilience and enhance national security in the face of climate change were reversed.

There were no white knights in the White House when it sought (and failed) to slash the EPA’s budget, or when the White House and EPA pages on climate change disappeared. Even when coal companies were granted the right to dump waste in streams, or when climate scientists were removed from the EPA’s board in favour of lobbyists, there was silence.

Together it is estimated by Climate Advisors that rule changes already under consideration have put at stake 330 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ reductions, with another 275Mt reductions vulnerable. To put the total amount in context, this is similar to the annual CO₂ emissions from Brazil (503Mt), Colombia (90Mt), Costa Rica (7.6Mt), El Salvador (6Mt).

Emissions regulations highly vulnerable and at risk (Source: Climate Advisors)

As can be seen (above), the 605 Mt estimate only accounts for reductions at stake in the period to 2030 – who knows how long it would take the US to get back on a decarbonisation pathway if all Obama-era regulations are rescinded?

Membership of the Paris agreement is nice, but reducing US emissions is what actually matters. The current debate is really between those who want to leave Paris and totally deny climate change, and those who see Paris as a branding and lobbying opportunity.

But the Paris agreement is not intended as a fig leaf. It is not a branding opportunity, nor is it intended as a platform for lobbying. It is a club for countries who are part of a global effort to tackle dangerous climate change, and who are committed to emissions reductions. The US no longer meets these admission criteria.

There are legitimate arguments in favour of staying in being made by many political leaders in the US, NGOs and others. Indeed, polling suggests that the vast majority of Americans favour staying in. Should the US leave, however, the moral outrage of these constituents could be a powerful catalyst for change. There is a danger remaining in could muddy the waters and allow US citizens believe they are contributing to resolving a global problem, when the opposite is the case.

Remaining in Paris could be also be considered a useful conceit that allows other countries to maintain decarbonisation momentum. On the other hand, the EU, China and India have promised not to backslide on their commitments, and there should be sufficient international leadership to sustain the agreement. It seems unlikely in any case that countries would interpret continued US membership as true commitment to addressing climate change.

145 countries representing nearly 83% of global emissions have ratified the agreement. It will stay in force regardless of the US position. The process of ratification is relatively straightforward, leaving a future administration free to re-join when the domestic climate policy is more in line with membership.

Continued policy pretence leads to a place where nothing is real and nothing can be believed. Double speak of the type envisaged here can be frustrating for citizens of our democracies, and can undermine trust and belief in international institutions, and indeed in the cadre of diplomats running them. Staying in may enhance the Trump administration brand, but it could undermine public confidence in the agreement and ultimately the potential for international cooperation in the future.

It may be better for the US to leave now, and re-join when it is ready to behave like a responsible global citizen. My prediction is that chicanery will win out, but it would be preferable to leave and reveal the unadorned truth to the world.

Joseph Curtin is a member of the Irish Government’s Climate Change Advisory Council. He is senior fellow for climate policy at the Institute of International and European Affairs, Dublin, and a Research Fellow University College Cork.

The post The US is no longer worthy of the Paris agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

US president Donald Trump has vowed to remove his country from the Paris climate agreement. But a rearguard action from his advisors has raised the prospect of the US remaining.

Energy secretary Rick Perry has said the US should “renegotiate” the deal – widely interpreted to mean a downward revision of its national target. But legal advisors to Trump reportedly warned of potential legal action against the federal government if it tries to water down commitments.

A schism has emerged among defenders of the Paris Agreement over how to respond. In an attempt to defuse the legal argument last week, the EU commissioner on climate change Miguel Arias Cañete told the Financial Times the US could “chart its own path” under the rules of the accord.

French diplomat Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris accord, in contrast emphasised its intention to ramp up ambition over time and the political cost of backtracking.

“The sense of the direction is really progress; it’s not going backwards,” Tubiana told E&E News. Later she said on Twitter: “Yes US can legally downsize [its climate commitments] as Contributions numbers are not legally binding. But politically should not.”

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That has left those at the Bonn climate meeting, which started on Monday, scrambling for an answer. Negotiators and environmentalists at the talks privately told Climate Home there was confusion around a message.

Cañete’s position is technically correct, according to legal experts. The text does give room for what negotiators refer to as “backsliding”. But the wider political context is summed up by the phrase “the spirit of the agreement”.

The concern, touched on by Tubiana, is that allowing the US to reduce their ambition would undermine a fundamental tenet of the agreement. Countries need to do more, not less, if their contributions are ever to add up to the overarching goal of holding global temperature rise “well below 2C”.

At a press conference on Monday, representatives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had a bet each way.

UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa told reporters the climate process would be able to accommodate a US administration that wanted to reduce its ambition.

“The spirit and the objective of the Paris agreement really requires that countries try to higher [sic] their ambition over time,” she said. “Having said that, of course it is important to acknowledge that parties may at different moments face some specific questions they may need to address.”

Report: China warns Trump: leaving Paris accord risks bad deals at G7, G20

The president of the 2016 Marrakech climate talks, Moroccan foreign minister Salaheddine Mezouar, said in an opening address that “the international community has become aware of the irreversibility of the commitments [to the Paris agreement]”.

When asked whether that meant he disagreed with Cañete, he said going against the will of the international community for increased ambition would be “difficult or futile” but he added that the “approach can be different” – a nod to Cañete’s concession that the US could choose the manner in which it tackles greenhouse gas emissions.

Different “paths” and “approaches” implies that all countries will eventually increase their ambition to the point where the global temperature rise is contained within 2C, but that they are free to choose how they arrive there. Trump has given no indication that a safe climate is his long-term intention for US policy.

NGOs were mostly silent on the issue, apparently split over how to respond. At an earlier press conference, Brandon Wu policy and campaign director at ActionAid US, said: “If the US wants to come in and say, well actually we’ll stay in the Paris agreement but we want to make sure that it is an option for all countries to reduce their commitments, that would be a problem.”

He added that allowing countries to cut their commitments without consequence “that essentially means that the Paris agreement will not be able to reach its stated goal”.

But when asked about the effect of a major player like the EU appearing to concede that was, in fact, the case, Wu said: “I would not concede that that precedent has been set.”

The post Climate advocates in Bonn stumped by Trump dilemma appeared first on Climate Home News.

As the White House postponed a meeting planned for Tuesday to decide its stance on the pact, diplomats redoubled warnings against pulling out.

Chai Qimin, director of international cooperation at the Chinese government-funded National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, raised the prospect of retribution spilling over into other international forums, such as the upcoming G7 and G20 meetings.

“Definitely it will impact on other diplomatic arenas, already on G7 and G20, the Major Economies Forum as well,” he said. “President Xi [Jinping] and our ambassador to the United Nations have said several times that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is irresponsible, which will harm the mutual trust in the multilateral mechanism.”

The G20 and G7 are critical to US president Donald Trump’s anti-globalisation agenda. The US has had statements against protectionism watered down in pre-G20 talks, as Trump attempts to convince trade partners to negotiate directly with the US.

Report: US sends “much smaller” team to climate talks in Bonn

Trump’s White House is divided over the climate accord, with advisors reportedly vying for the US president’s ear. His spokesperson promised a final decision before the G7 leaders meeting on 26 May.

Under Barack Obama, the US was a key broker of the Paris agreement. It helped to secure broad participation from developing countries with promises of billions of dollars in financial aid.

In his budget proposal, Trump is seeking to axe an outstanding $2 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund.

A withdrawal from the agreement altogether would amount to a further, more grievous breach of trust, said Ethiopian diplomat Gebru Jember Endalew, head of the 48 least developed countries negotiating group.

“Of course it’s a betrayal, to be honest,” said Endalew. “At this stage when most of the political leaders are actively engaged, they are well aware of the issue. So, I feel that if the US withdraws, it’s a betrayal to the global community – especially the least developed countries and the most vulnerable groups of countries.”

US to UN: jobs come before carbon cuts

“The diplomatic consequences of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement cannot be overstated,” said a negotiator from a small island state, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Every leader stood up in Paris and pledged to transform their economies, and every part of their governments are now engaged in that effort… Every conversation with the US at every level would therefore be touched by a decision to withdraw and the ill feeling that it would generate.

“US global leadership, and the US economy, would be the biggest victims. It simply makes no sense, especially at a time when the US needs all the new jobs it can generate, and all its allies to be working together.”

The US’ former lead climate negotiator Todd Stern, writing in the Washington Post on Monday, said leaving the deal would be an “act of diplomatic malpractice” and erode the diplomatic capital available to Trump and his secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

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“I do think that there’s going to be repercussions,” Paula Caballero, director of the World Resources Institute climate programme, told Climate Home. If he were to announce a withdrawal before the G7 summit begins in Sicily, just a week after this round of climate talks ends, Trump would find himself confronted with incensed and uncompromising leaders.

“I think that it’s a mistake to think that international climate diplomacy is somehow isolated and an environmental issue. It’s gone completely mainstream,” said Caballero, who previously led climate negotiations for Colombia. “I haven’t read the Art of the Deal [Trump’s bestselling book], but I’ve been negotiating long enough to know that what you bring to the table is your credibility. This undermines the US’ standing, stature and credibility.”

Caballero said US influence in the developing world, where it has been engaged in a soft power struggle with China, would be diminished.

“Now climate change is about more than the environment,” said Endalew. “It’s environment plus. It’s more on trade, technology and other climate diplomacy issues as well. And countries all over the world are now just bringing the climate change agenda as part of their foreign policy.

“So US will definitely lose its leadership role in this process and of course it’s a big betrayal and I think it will be disadvantaged from a moral point of view as well. Because they have been given a second time to lead the process. If they leave that, I think they will not have any excuse for that.”

Karl Mathiesen is attending the Bonn climate talks. Follow him on twitter @karlmathiesen and email tips to km@climatehome.org

NOTE: The headline originally read “China warns Trump: leaving Paris accord risks bad deals at G7, G20”. This has been corrected. Chai does not speak for the Chinese government.

The post Trump warned leaving Paris accord risks bad deals at G7, G20 appeared first on Climate Home News.