An investigation by the fund’s independent complaint mechanism found a series of failures that could “cause or exacerbate” violent conflict between indigenous people and settlers.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) will not provide any money to the project managed by Nicaragua’s authoritarian regime until it fully complies with the fund’s rules, its board ruled at an annual meeting in July.

This marks the first time the GCF board puts on hold an approved project over human rights concerns. The decision comes at the end of a process that took more than two years since a coalition of local and international NGOs filed a complaint.

But the fund stopped short of entirely scrapping the project, as local activists requested. The Nicaraguan government now has the chance to make it compliant with the GCF rules.

A GCF spokesperson told Climate Home that the matter “has received, and continues to receive, its highest attention”. They added that the fund reserves the right to exercise its legal rights in case the issues are not addressed to its satisfaction.

Human rights abuses

The project, which was approved in 2020, aims to reduce deforestation in the Unesco-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves in the Caribbean Region of Nicaragua.

The region is gripped by an increasingly violent conflict between indigenous communities and settlers, who are grabbing land to exploit the forest’s resources and farm cattle.

Independent legal observers have documented repeated attacks against indigenous people in the area with dozens of people murdered, kidnapped or raped over the last few years.

A report by the internal redress body said the complainants’ concerns that the project may fuel further violence were justified.

It also found the project had been approved even though it did not comply with a series of GCF’s policies and procedures. Investigators highlighted the failure to carry out due diligence on conflict risks and human rights violations and to conduct free and informed consultations with indigenous communities before the project’s approval.

The EU-Mercosur trade deal will harm Brazil’s indigenous communities

These failures “may adversely impact the complainant(s) and other indigenous communities in the project areas”, the report said.

A GCF spokesperson said the fund was not aware that the development of the funding proposal was not in compliance with its policies at the time of the project’s approval. New evidence brought to light subsequently through the independent investigation showed that some of the information presented by the project proponent, as part of its due diligence, was not accurate or correct, the GCF added.

Bittersweet ruling

Nearly a year after the investigation was concluded, the board has now requested the GCF Secretariat, its administrative arm, to put the project on hold until it respects the fund’s policies and procedures.

The ruling’s summary does not specify if all of the issues raised through the complaint mechanism will need to be addressed.

Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas

The result is bittersweet for the groups behind the complaint.

Florencia Ortuzar, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), says that, even if the outcome may ultimately be positive, the decision gives no clarity as to what process the Secretariat will follow. “We do not know which specific issues of non-compliance will be looked into nor how they will aim to fix them”, she added.

Calls for cancellation

Amaru Ruiz, director of the Nicaraguan organisation Fundación del Río, says the ruling validates indigenous populations’ concerns, but he believes the programme should be axed rather than simply improved.

“A project that violates human rights, consultation processes and a series of procedures should be cancelled”, he told Climate Home News. “The problems are substantive, not just formalities”.

The GCF Secretariat will now need to work with the Nicaraguan state apparatus and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, its funding partner on the project, to resolve the issues.

The government of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has been accused of widespread human rights abuses. Photo: Presidencia El Salvador

The government led since 2007 by president Daniel Ortega has been responsible for “widespread and systematic human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity”, according to the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.

Ruiz claims the Nicaraguan regime does not have the political goodwill to play within the rules. “It is only after the financial resources, so I believe it will try to show on paper that the project is now compliant even if that is not the case”, he added. “We will see if the Secretariat acknowledges its previous mistake and will make sure regulations are properly applied now”.

Lack of transparency

The complainants’ worries are compounded by what they described as a lack of transparency during the lengthy redress mechanism.

Investigators concluded the reviews in August 2022 but their findings have only been made public now following the completion of the complaint process. The GCF’s board members discussed the report during three separate meetings before making a final decision nearly two weeks ago.

The discussions happened behind closed doors and public updates on the case were limited. This prompted some complainants to criticise the process as “unfair, non-transparent and deficient”.

G20 divisions over key climate goals pile pressure on Cop28 hosts

Aida’s Ortuzar told Climate Home News “this is especially concerning as it is the first time a complaint reached the board and it sets a worrisome precedent”.

The report by the redress mechanism also raised concerns over the way the GCF relies heavily on information submitted by project proponents to make decisions on whether to fund them.

“This leaves the GCF extremely vulnerable to policy and safeguards non-compliance that can result in huge reputational risks to the fund”, the investigators wrote.

The article was updated on 27/07 to include comments from the Green Climate Fund received after publication

The post UN climate fund suspends project in Nicaragua over human rights concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.

More than 70 heads of state, plus business and civil society leaders, will take the stage of a virtual climate summit on 12 December – five years after countries agreed in Paris to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

The event is the first test of the Paris deal, under which countries agreed to ramp up their – collectively insufficient – contributions every five years to meet the temperature goals.

Since then, emissions have continued to rise and climate impacts have intensified. Many governments were already running late with their climate planning when the Covid crisis hit, diverting resources into healthcare, social security and business bailouts.

With no UN climate negotiations being held this year and the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, postponed to November 2021, the UN, the UK and France, with support from Chile and Italy, are co-hosting the summit to galvanise political leadership.

“Many people are looking for positivity… and a look forward to 2021 as a year of change for the better,” Marcel Beukeboom, climate envoy for the Netherlands, told Climate Home News, in anticipation of the event.

“We need political momentum… that is what is much needed,” added Agripina Jenkins, a climate diplomat for Costa Rica.

Guterres: UN will build global coalition for carbon neutrality in 2021

While every national leader has been invited to submit a pre-recorded speech of up to two minutes, only those that can demonstrate increased ambition will be guaranteed a slot, with priority going to the most transformative announcements.

That could mean a strengthened 2030 target, a net zero commitment, post-2020 climate finance pledge or more robust programme to adapt to climate impacts. “There will be no space for general statements,” according to a logistical note seen by Climate Home.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to submit new or improved 2030 climate plans and publish long-term decarbonisation strategies before the end of the year.

As of Monday, only 16 countries representing 4.6% of global emissions had formally submitted a new or updated 2030 target to the UN, according to the World Resources Institute.

A number of countries are expected to come forward with enhanced climate ambition at the summit and edge the world closer to its climate goals. Formal submissions to the UN could follow in the next few weeks.

UK announces stronger 2030 emissions target, setting the bar for ambition summit

There has been movement from key players on long-term commitments in recent months.

China set its sights on carbon neutrality by 2060, while Japan and South Korea unveiled 2050 net zero goals. Joe Biden was elected as US president on a platform to decarbonise the world’s largest economy by 2050.

If those promises are followed through, global warming could be limited to 2.1C by the end of the century, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker, putting the Paris goals within striking distance.

Sébastien Treyer, executive director of the French climate think-tank Iddri, described “cautious hope” at signs the deal signed in Paris was delivering greater emissions cuts “at the slow pace of change that characterises international relations but also with sudden accelerations like the one that we have seen in the last six months”.

This long-term ambition is yet to be reflected into the world’s largest emitters’ shorter-term targets, he noted, adding the political dynamic for enhancing ambition was “fragile” and much more work was need to make these pledges “an economic reality”.

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While a host of announcements are expected throughout the five-hour summit, its success rests on what large emitters are ready to deliver.

The EU is on a tight schedule to agree on cutting emissions by at least 55% from 1990 to 2030, up from 40% currently, at a Council meeting starting two days before the summit. Thorny discussions on the union’s recovery package risk derailing the climate agenda.

Chinese sources have told Climate Home Beijing is on track to present its updated 2030 climate plan before the end of the year, but it is not clear whether president Xi Jinping will reveal further details at this forum or simply reiterate the net zero pledge.

Last week, the UK Cop26 host accepted the recommendation of its climate advisors and agreed to cut emissions 68% between 1990 and 2030.“We’re going to challenge world leaders not only to match our ambition but to set out exactly how they plan to do so,” prime minister Boris Johnson said in a video message ahead of the summit.

While Donald Trump is not expected to be part of the event, and Biden is not able to participate as president-elect, US sub-national players and incoming members of the new administration may make an appearance.

Czech commission calls for coal phase-out by 2038

Among some climate campaigners, there is skepticism another leaders’ summit will deliver anything else than a string of promises and speeches.

Sriram Madhusoodanan, deputy campaigns director at Corporate Accountability told Climate Home: “We’ve seen a number of big fanfare summit since Paris with cycle of speeches by heads of states but not really anything meaningful come out in terms of the demands that civil society has been talking about to stay at 1.5C.”

Without the possibility for civil society to directly respond to leader’s announcements, the summit could be a space for greenwashing, he added.

While the event may draw attention to “hopeful signs,” “we are not transitioning at the pace required to meet our goal,”  Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home. Countries havee yet to deliver coherent action that includes emissions cuts, adaptation and support for vulnerable nations, she said.

The Cop26 unit has asked donor countries to bring new finance pledges, but there are few signs of that materialising. The UK is cutting its own aid budget in the wake of the pandemic.

“This is where I am more worried and disappointed,” said Dagnet. “At a time when inequality and poverty are increasing… we are falling short on solidarity.”

The post ‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a pre-recorded speech to the UN General Assembly, Jair Bolsonaro accused “shady interests” jealous of Brazil’s food exports of running a “brutal disinformation” campaign.

Fires in the Pantanal were “the inevitable consequence of hot local temperatures coupled with the accumulation of decaying organic matter,” Bolsonaro claimed.

This year, the Pantanal has been devastated by the highest number of fires since records began in the 1990s. In the state of Mato Grosso, there were 4,200 fires in August 2020 compared to just 184 in August 2019 and 71 in August 2018.

The fires have caused respiratory problems for the region’s human inhabitants, making coronavirus more dangerous, and killed rare animals like jaguars, pumas and giant armadillos.

Encouraged by Bolsonaro, land grabbers advance on Amazon indigenous territory

Observatório do Clima, a network of Brazilian environmentalists, called the president’s denials “delusional”.

“He denounced a non-existent collusion between NGOs and foreign powers against the country, but, by denying reality and not presenting any plan to solve the problems we face, Bolsonaro is the one who threatens our economy,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary at Observatório do Clima.

“Brazil will pay the price for his irresponsibility for a long time. We have a president who sabotages his own country”.

The increase in fires is thought to be driven by a combination of climate change, deforestation and the actions of cattle farmers. According to NASA, the December 2019 to April 2020 wet season was unusually dry.

This left the Pantanal more vulnerable to fires spreading during its July to October 2020 dry season. Many of these fires were started deliberately by cattle farmers on the plateaus surrounding the Pantanal to clear space for their cows to graze.

In his speech Bolsonaro blamed Amazon rainforest fires on indigenous people “burn[ing] their farmland in search of livelihood in already clear areas”. He has previously blamed indigenous people for the Pantanal fires.

According to the Guardian’s analysis of satellite images though, fires which hit the Pantanal’s Baiá do Guató indigenous reserve started outside its borders.

Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ dry up as drought takes hold

Green groups have blamed Bolsonaro’s policies for the fires, accusing him of stripping power and resources from the agencies that are meant to enforce environmental protection.

In his first weeks as President, Bolsonaro downgraded the role of his Environment Ministry and removed the words “climate change” from its mission.

In 2019, Bolsonaro sacked his space agency chief for providing data which showed that deforestation was increasing. Bolsonaro said the data was “sensationalism” but, at the time, other researchers told Climate Home News that the agency’s data were too conservative if anything.

Opposition congresswoman Fernanda Melchionna said in a statement: “The dismantling of Brazilian environmental policy, underway in the Bolsonaro administration, is extremely serious and is causing incalculable loss for Brazil.”

She accused the government of “militarization of research and environmental inspection bodies, the emptying of the Ministry of the Environment’s actions, the refusal to enforce budgetary rules and the failure to take available action to prevent and fight deforestation and fires.”

Bolsonaro’s plan to unlock the Amazon: split its indigenous people

André Luiz Siqueira, director of Ecology & Action told the BBC that “the Federal Government strengthens the sense of impunity” for farmers who start fires.

Deforestation in the Amazon has been linked to droughts across South America, contributing to fires like those on the Pantanal.

This is because rainforests like the Amazon produce ‘flying rivers’, where moisture rises into the air and is transported across South America before becoming rain. When the rainforest is cut back, these ‘rivers’ become streams.

Deforestation in the neighbouring Cerrado region also damages the Pantanal. Without tree roots holding the soil in place, the rain washes more sediment into the River Paraguay. That sediment ends up in the Pantanal, silts up its waterways and dries out the region.

Bolsonaro is facing pressure from world leaders over the devastation. Last August, as the Amazon burned, the German and French leaders called emergency talks on the fires at the G7 leaders’ summit.

France has since threatened to oppose the trade deal between the EU and South America’s Mercosur unless all nations, including Brazil, commit to honouring the Paris climate agreement.

Bolsonaro has hit back by calling France’s Emmanuel Macron a “colonialist” and “sensationalist”. In Tuesday’s UN speech, he said Brazil was the world’s largest food producer and “for that reason, there’s so much interest in spreading disinformation about our environment”.

Pressure has also come from financial institutions, 29 of which threatened to divest from Brazil unless it does more to combat deforestation. These investors manage nearly $4tn worth of assets.

Amazon land grabbers are destroying Brazil nut groves for cattle pastures

Bolsonaro is also under pressure at home. On the same day as his UN speech, the Brazilian Supreme Court was deciding whether he had acted unconstitutionally in failing to make full use of the National Fund on Climate Change.

The fund was set under President Lula’s government in 2009 to allow public authorities, co-operatives and private companies to reduce their emissions and better prepare for the effects of climate change.

The opposition parties bringing the court case accuse the government of disbanding the climate change secretariat, which was responsible for the climate fund, and abolishing the fund’s steering committee.

Those bringing the case say that much of the fund’s R$508m (US$93m) budget had not been spent. Suely Araújo, from the Observatório do Clima, accused the government of “calculated inaction” and adopting an “environmental anti-policy”.

Bolsonaro faces presidential elections in 2022. His latest approval ratings show an even split. Around 39% of Brazilians approve of him while 34% disapprove.

The post Bolsonaro shifts blame for unprecedented Brazilian wetland fires appeared first on Climate Home News.

US President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations plenary hall at the summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda (credit: UN photo)

By Alex Pashley in London

– Watch Climate Week’s Signature Event live
– Climate pledges rain in as UN general assembly continues
– World leaders rally around zero-carbon goal
– Brazil pledges emissions cuts as UK doubles climate finance
– Comment: UN General Assembly offers ‘last chance’ for climate leadership 

1638 BST: That’s all for our coverage now. 

The discussions continue on on Climate Week’s live channel.

So to recap:

1. Fossil fuel subsidies in the sights. Michael Bloomberg to OECD’s Angel Gurria slam the paradox of making emissions cuts, while continuing to subsidise bumps for coal, oil and gas.
2. India’s environment minister reminds sustainable development demands an end to conspicuous consumption.
3. A carbon price is vital. Pricing pollution “changes [the] rationality of how we do business”, and will incentivise clean investments, says World Bank’s Jim Kim.
4. Don’t miss the forests for the trees in misreading Paris agreement, Todd Stern says. Deal won’t be wholly legally binding, nor will pledges stop warming to 2C, but we’re on track to a new climate regime.

1621 BST: Laurence Tubiana, France’s ambassador for climate change

The outcome of the Paris summit will be “broader” than what emerges from the UN climate change secretariat, Tubiana tells Climate Week.

It will reflect the unprecedented mobilisation of cities, states, regions, and businesses, which the French COP presidency now calls the ‘Paris Alliance for Climate Action’. Nor is there time to wait until 2020 when the agreement comes into force. Much is already afoot.

Now this needs to be reflected in inputs in the negotiating text. The final round of interim talks resume in just under a month.

Though there is a “sea change” of difference between this year and Climate  Week 2014. Building support for a zero-carbon long term goal yesterday is one example. So is Brazil’s emissions pledge committing to decarbonisation. Nothing would have expected this two or three years ago, Tubiana says.

1607 BST: Top business leaders talk innovation in a low carbon world

High-level speeches give way to a panel boasting BT’s Niall Dunne, IKEA’s Steve Howard, Philips’ Bill Bien, and Siemens’ Jan Rabe.

France’s top climate ambassador Laurence Tubiana is up next, with heads of Canadian province Quebec and south of the border, Vermont, leading the next panel.

Panel with BT, IKEA, Philips & Siemens – “we are leaving the past behind” | #CWNYC pic.twitter.com/KjXpKG0HPg

— Jim Walker (@JimWalker99) September 28, 2015

1550 BST: US top climate envoy, Todd Stern: the stars are aligned Envoy of US secretary of state John Kerry says “the stars are more aligned for a historical universal agreement than they have ever been”.

Critics that point out climate pledges not currently sufficient to cap warming to 2C, or the legal nature of a likely Paris deal won’t be wholly binding are “missing the forest for the trees”, Stern tells Climate Week.

Paris has great chance to get a durable climate regime. Though regular reviews to deepen emission cuts, clear monitoring, reporting and verification of countries’ emissions, and ‘forward-looking differentiation’ underpins that. “Let’s get started… let’s keep our eyes on the prize.”

1542 BST: Gurria: costs of inaction far higher than any of us could responsibly justify The OECD can help countries navigate this low-carbon transition to ensure we remain on course.

1540 BST: Gurria: hit carbon hard with a price on pollution “We know its ugly face. So let’s put a price on it.” For interests groups hanging on to dear life, to their privileges they’ve accumulated over time, fight them we must. Paris summit can’t be like another round of trade negotiations. We don’t have time to wait for another ten years.

1537 BST: OECD chief Angel Gurria: Time for a climate reality check Fossil fuel subsidies lowest value is $200 billion a year. IMF much higher.

“We are spending double what we need to find to fight emissions,” says Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development secretary-general in impassioned plea.

Coal easiest to replace economically and technically. Coal isn’t cheap. “Let’s not mortgage away tomorrow”.

1532 BST: Jim Kim finishes: Please, take us to a world where we’re not apologising to our grandkids

1529 BST: Jim Kim: 3 key points to New York’s business community Ramp up renewables: Solar costs plummeting in Africa, but need to work out how we ensure baseload power. Ditch fossil fuel subsidies. Put a price on carbon “changes rationality of how we do business”.

1526 BST: World Bank chief Jim Kim If we don’t take aggressive action in trying to lift the billion out of extreme poverty, we’re in for more fragility, more conflict, more problems in the world.

On the other hand, there are enormously promising lucrative possibilities for private sector in developing countries. “Perceived risk just perceived.”

“We have no hope for extreme poverty… unless we tackle climate change.”

1523 BST: Javadekar: Talks down carbon markets, talks up tech transfer

You can’t pollute, then pay bills ‘free of sins’. We need green credits.

India needs critical technologies to make energy cleaner to mitigate climate change. Shouldn’t be ‘prohibitive in cost’.

Why should we think of profits when this is going to be a disaster. Green Climate Fund could finance it?

1520 BST: Javadekar: ‘Paris a festival of celebration because world is walking new forward’

All countries are taking action. But everybody is equal.

“We need climate justice because poverty is the biggest pollutant”

1513 BST: Javadekar: India to release climate pledge on October 2 (Gandhi’s birthday)

“Father of nation” said we must return planet back to future generations as we received it.

1513 BST: Javadekar: throw away throwaway culture

Current consumption levels require 6 planets. We need to scale back our conspicuous consumption.

Catch word is “sustainable development – India is showing the way”.

1507 BST: Prakash Javadekar, India environment minister

“I’m an eternal optimist. I’m confident Paris will be a success. We will enter into a new regime which will take us into real climate justice also.”

1507 BST: Bloomberg: Cities can galvanise national action

“One thing to give campaign speech. Another to see results. In cities you see results, got to move it up the chain” to national level.

Compact of Mayors will join up with the Compact of States and Regions to boost reporting of sub-national emissions.

1503 BST: Bloomberg: Compact of Mayors goes from strength to strength

Enhanced greenhouse gas inventories for cities. 175 cities joined, home to 250 million people covered.

“Not just something we invent and never turn into action, this is actually something you have to perform. There’s a real economic impact if you’re at the top of the list than at the bottom of the list.”

1500 BST: Bloomberg: backing clean energy attracts employees

“Clean energy not altruistic, just good business.”

“Young people want to work for businesses that are environmental leaders.”

That gives us edge over our competitors, founder of news company Bloomberg LP says.

1457 BST: Michael Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Cities-Climate Change takes the stage

Funnel fossil fuel subsidies into clean energy. “You get what you pay for. And we are paying for a hotter climate, hotter planet, and possibly a disaster for humanity.”

Fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $540 bn in 2014, according to the IEA, whereas bumps for renewables were less than a quarter of that at $120 bn.

1450 BST: Christiana Figueres, UN’s top climate chief is in fine fettle as she introduces Michael Bloomberg

“Hey – is this an exciting week or what? Woo! I can barely stay on message. I am so excited with what’s happened.”

1448 BST: John Kufuor, President of Ghana and Ban Ki-moon Special Envoy on Climate Change speaks on behalf of UN chief:

“I count on you to innovate and elaborate. You are part of the first generation that can end extreme poverty in all its forms and the last to avert the worst impacts of climate change. We need all hands on decks at this critical moment in history.”

1442 BST: CEO of the Climate Group Mark Kenber takes stage

“What a week it’s been,” he says. Leadership from business and countries “tremendous”.

CEO of @ClimateGroup @MarkKenber speaking LIVE from New York City at #CWNYC Signature Event >> http://t.co/VlLH8Fougw #Action2015 #WeMeanIt

— The Climate Group (@ClimateGroup) September 28, 2015

1439 BST: And we’re off Climate Week NYC (#CWNYC) live feed begins as more institutions sound out climate announcements

1438 BST: Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group calls for end to fossil fuel subsidies

Green group lends its support to the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform Communiqué.

Sandrine Dixson-Declève, CLG’s director said: “Our members, leading businesses from across the world, are being loud and clear, end perverse fossil fuel subsidies now for the benefit of sustainable and low carbon economic development.

“They recognise fossil fuel subsidy reform as an important climate-change mitigation policy with clear economic, social and environmental co-benefits.

“The international community should increase efforts to phase-out subsidies to fossil fuels through policy transparency, ambitious reform and targeted support for the poorest.”

1434 BST: Six major US banks back strong Paris deal

Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo call for “leadership and cooperation among governments” in tackling climate change. Here’s the statement.

An estimated $90 trillion will be invested over the next 15 years in urban infrastructure and energy, they say. Their institutions are collectively “committing significant resources toward financing climate solutions” and add that “clear, stable and long-term policy frameworks are needed to accelerate and further scale investments.”

“Financial institutions have a critical role to play in financing the transition to a low-carbon future,” said Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres and director of its $13 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk, which published the statement.

“As U.S. negotiators enter climate talks in Paris, they can say with confidence that the business and financial community in this country is ready for government leadership to address climate change.”

.@MorganStanley @WellsFargo @BofA_Community @Citi @GoldmanSachs @jpmorgan agree on global climate deal #CWNYC pic.twitter.com/56sSuZJvKV

— We Mean Business (@WMBtweets) September 28, 2015

1430 BST: Good morning to all stateside.

There’s been a salivating stream of announcements over the past week in New York.

Sustainable development goals were adopted on Friday, Pope Francis gave a trio of high-profile speeches, and China stumped up a ‘game-changing’ $3.1 billion in climate aid as it sealed another bilateral deal with the US.

Over Climate Week, the full scale of fossil fuel divestment pledges was revealed, blue chip companies pledged to go 100% renewable and cities backed LED street lights.

World leaders now mingle in Manhattan at the UN’s general assembly. They have moved on from a climate focus yesterday to other geopolitical matters – but the topic could still get a mention. Here’s the running order.

Meanwhile, a top line-up gets under way shortly at Climate Week’s headline event. India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar, UN cities envoy Michael Bloomberg and the chiefs of the OECD and World Bank will give 10-minute addresses. Watch it here.

I’ll be bringing you all the announcements, comments and reaction as they happen. Stay tuned.

The post As it happened: New York sparkles with vows of climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, French President François Hollande and Peruvian President Ollanta Humala summarise the outcome of a working lunch attended by a ‘small but representative group of world leaders’ (credit: UN photo)

By Alex Pashley

Support is building behind the radical concept of global decarbonisation.

Severing the link between fossil fuels and economic development is the contentious next step in holding warming to the agreed limit of 2C.

A broad coalition of countries moved to translate that goal into action at an informal meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York on Sunday.

Thirty heads of state including Chinese president Xi Jinping, his German counterpart Angela Merkel and Brazilian premier Dilma Rousseff, reaffirmed the 2C temperature threshold must be the objective of a Paris climate summit in December.

At a working lunch headed by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, and France and Peru’s presidents, they proposed ways to convert that into more tangible targets.

“The progressive decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of the century, or the shift towards 100% clean energy systems, or green low carbon transition during the course of this century,” were the three options set out in a statement.

Report: G7 buoys climate talks with support for zero carbon goal

In June, the G7 declared support for a net zero carbon goal, driven by the European Union and summit host Merkel. The German chancellor scored similar consensus on a visit with Brazil’s Rousseff in August.

The outcome of Sunday’s New York meeting showed global opinion was catching up, said Liz Gallagher, analyst at London think tank E3G.

“The consensus emerging on expectations for Paris as building an enduring regime to keep us on track for 2C, echoes the EU’s own decision a few weeks back,” she said.

There was also agreement on a need to increase ambition over time, with “many” supporting progress reviews every five years. And leaders emphasised Paris must set out how a promised US$100 billion a year by 2020 of climate finance will flow from rich to poor countries.

It remains to be seen how the high-level discussion will feed into the text of a Paris deal, still the subject of fierce technical negotiations.

The summary of the meeting stressed the goal was to “reach a shared political understanding” and not substitute for UN climate talks.

Report: Brazil backs long term zero carbon goal as Merkel visits

Despite national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 2030, the planet is on course for levels of warming deemed dangerous.

To stay within atmospheric capacities for carbon dioxide pollution, emissions have to fall to net zero in the next half of the century, scientists say.

Yet countries continue to rely on fossil fuels for most of their energy, which pump out warming gases.

Energy generated from coal, oil or gas accounted for 85% of primary consumption in 2014, according to BP’s statistical review. Renewable energy excluding hydropower still represents a small fraction at an estimated 6%.

Jennifer Morgan at the US-based World Resources Institute was upbeat about the progress made in New York.

“After years of pushing, we are approaching a real turning point on global climate action,” she said. “Change is in the air.”

The post World leaders home in on long-term green goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pope Francis meets Ban Ki-moon. The pontiff addressed the UN plenary hall in New York to call for sustainable development (credit: UN photo)

By Alex Pashley

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the world had chosen a “life of dignity and prosperity for the health of the planet” on Friday by ratifying 17 international goals that seek to end extreme poverty and hunger.

“Billions of young people must use the goals to transform the world. We will do that through partnership and commitment. We must leave nobody behind,” Ban told reporters in New York, after 193 UN member states green-lighted the Sustainable Development Goals.

The set of voluntary targets and indicators will be expected to shape the agenda and policies of governments over the next 15 years.

Replacing the eight expiring Millennium Development Goals, the goals take steps to fight climate change, end violence against women and provide universal health coverage from next year.

Analysis: Why should you care about the Sustainable Development Goals?

It came as Pope Francis addressed the UN on the world’s commitment to fight poverty, end social exclusion and declared a “right to the environment”, which mankind had no authority to abuse.

Ban said this generation could be the first to end extreme poverty and hunger, and the last with the power to stop climate change.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals? http://t.co/DRHB7HG0wR #SDGs pic.twitter.com/7K0EXvOgF2

— World Economic Forum (@wef) September 24, 2015

The South Korean diplomat hailed the feat as the “most inclusive process in UN history,” with some 8.5 million people consulted on the drafting process, which officials laboured over for three years.

The president of the UN’s general assembly, Mogens Lykketoft called on governments to define how they will implement the post-2015 development agenda. A summit will be held in April to iron out details, he said.

Critics say trillions of dollars are needed to carry out the visionary package, and say they are overoptimistic in making their vision reality.

“We can do this if we want to do it,” Lykketoft said, taking questions for Ban.

“The decision makers have to understand if they don’t do it, the number of problems they’ll have to deal with is much more than we have to deal with today.”

A warming planet is set to lead to a rise in extreme weather, like droughts and storms. Goal number 13 calls to take urgent action to stop global warming.

The Overseas Development Institute, a London think tank, said 720 million may fall back into extreme poverty unless greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2030, and fall to near zero by 2100.

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Leonardo DiCaprio at last year’s UN climate summit, which had a mass march through the streets of New York as its high point (Flickr/ UN photos)

By Alex Pashley

Once a year the world’s elected representatives mingle in Manhattan for the UN general assembly.

This year secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has bumped climate change and sustainable development to top of the agenda.

The New York meet will see a new set of development goals signed off, and 40 world leaders gather for a private discussion on ensuring a global climate pact is agreed in Paris later this year.

But campaigners aren’t squandering the opportunity to pressure dignitaries to ratchet up ambition before a key December summit.

On the sidelines is Climate Week. The seventh edition is chock-full of timed announcements, and at its core is the message of the low carbon economy.

The event, which runs from September 21-28 aims to make UN negotiators “see what is happening in the real world of investment, cities and subnational entities,” says Ban’s right-hand man, Janos Pasztor.

Over 100 affiliated events are scattered around the Big Apple, organisers says, culminating in a top event bringing together head honchos of climate-smart firms and politicians.

Here’s what is going on.

40 states and regions unveiled carbon cuts for the first time –  equal to what America emits a year.

The ‘compact’ counts California, the Basque Country and Rio de Janeiro as its members.  They will spare the atmosphere 7.9 billion tonnes of CO2, make up 5% of global emissions and account for 10% of world GDP, it said on Monday.

Scotland “determined to lead by example” on climate: @NicolaSturgeon on #ClimateTV for #CWNYC http://t.co/pEYWJb8MUc pic.twitter.com/rQCYI73xix

— The Climate Group (@ClimateGroup) September 22, 2015

Crucially, these are the “dynamos of the global economy”, said Carl Pope, an adviser to Michael Bloomberg who is the UN’s special envoy for cities and climate.

Top governments can set targets, but cities and regions are “where the rubber meets the road,” Pope tells Climate Home.

That number coming forward could reach 300 as sub-national groups lead, and in the case of some like Quebec or South Australia take on laggard federal governments.

Fossil fuel divestment pledges went into overdrive to top $2.6 trillion

A campaign to blacklist coal, tarsands and other polluting investments has swelled 50 times in size on a year earlier, as private firms joined faith-based groups and NGOs which got the cause off the ground.

“Since starting on the campuses of a few colleges in the U.S., this movement has struck a chord with people across the world who care about climate change, and convinced some of the largest and most influential institutions in the world to begin pulling their money out of climate destruction,” says May Boeve, executive director of campaigners 350.org.

Fortune 500 firms pledge to run on 100% renewable electricity Goldman Sachs, Nike and Walmart were among eight new companies boosting the one-year-old RE100 campaign to 36 members on Wednesday.

Timeframes vary on when companies will reach their lofty goals, but the signal is important.

.@Nike, @Walmart, @GoldmanSachs, @JNJNews @ProcterGamble @Starbucks @Steelcase, @Voya, @salesforce pledge 100% renewable electricity! #RE100 — ClimateWeekNYC (@ClimateWeekNYC) September 23, 2015

“Climate change is a global issue that requires global solutions. We believe that collaboration is important to accelerate and scale sustainable innovations that have potential to change the world, and Nike is proud to join the leading global brands in RE100,” said Eric Sprunk, chief operating officer at NIKE Inc, who plan to reach the goal by 2025.

Pope lands in US to address Congress and General Assembly

Pope Francis moves up from a short spell in Cuba to meet President Obama and address lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

His pastoral message to Catholics to conserve the planet injected a moral dimension into the climate debate. Yet the Vatican’s posturing has drawn scorn from sceptic Republicans.

Last week he implored European environment ministers to get the “desired result” in Paris.

(Pic: Flickr/Catholic Church England and Wales)

More climate pledges expected

Major emitters yet to submit so-called INDCs are slated to finally show their cards over the week.

Brazil, India, Indonesia and perhaps South Africa will reportedly deliver plans, just days before a defacto deadline to maximising exposure for their efforts.

Sustainable Development Goals

World leaders will formally ink new goals that will be expected to shape their agendas and policies over the next 15 years.

The universal set of voluntary targets and indicators take steps to fight climate change, end violence against women, and provide universal health coverage.

Stacking up forest progress

Last year, the New York Declaration on Forests signed by over 130 governments and businesses pledged to cut net deforestation to zero by 2030.

Asia Pulp and Paper, US food processor Cargill, and consumer goods firm Unilever were among 34 companies vowing to green supply chains.

A year on, an update is expected later this week, said organisers The Climate Group.

It takes the world’s temperature on climate action two months before Paris

With the conference so close, it’s put up or shut up.

Negotiating positions are being refined by countries, and grand interventions from the business community, celebrities and civil society, can only build so much momentum. The last five days of interim talks are slated for Bonn in October.

A bright green light shines on the horizon – tonight @EmpireStateBldg partners with @ClimateGroup to symbolize #CWNYC pic.twitter.com/ovgwxe7nB5

— ClimateWeekNYC (@ClimateWeekNYC) September 21, 2015

The post New York climate week to test global zeal for Paris pact appeared first on Climate Home News.

Extreme poverty was cut in half by 2010 on 1990s levels, achieving one of the main Millennium Development Goals (photo: UN)

By Alex Pashley

The UN released a rough text of revamped international development goals on Wednesday, inserting tracts on energy and climate for the first time.

‘Sustainable Development Goals’ to take effect next year until 2030 will update the Millennium Development Goals, an anti-poverty push established at the turn of the century.

The list is set to grow from eight to 17 main objectives, as it widens it scope to tackle evolving challenges like climate change.

The “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” calls for countries to build up resilience to the impacts of global warming, as well as boosting clean energy access for the world’s poor.

Report: Climate deals make 2015 ‘biggest year since 1945’, says UN envoy 

“Natural resource depletion and adverse impacts of environmental degradation, including drought and the prospect of irreversible climate change, add to the list of challenges which humanity faces,” the ‘Zero Draft’ reads.

Here’s text for Energy and Climate goals of new Zero Draft for Sustainable Development Goals https://t.co/ZJrk2zF1D1 pic.twitter.com/Wg3hsTFQ0G

— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) June 3, 2015

After two years of negotiations, more tinkering is likely before the final version is adopted at the UN’s General Assembly in September. A key meet in Ethiopia in July will move forward commitments on finance.

New goals

Goal number seven is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. It calls to “increase substantially” the share of renewables in power generation.

Next, goal number 13 calls to “take urgent action to combat climate change and impacts”, urging countries to build up defences to more frequent and extreme weather. A $100 billion climate fund to help poor countries prepare is too cited.

Though it caveats that the UN climate change organisation, the UNFCCC, will be the ultimate decision maker.

Alison Doig, a climate change advisor at Christian Aid said the SDGs were significant in being the “building blocks” of future low-carbon development, laying the foundations for a global climate pact expected to be signed in Paris this December.

But the draft’s “bland terminology” didn’t convey the urgency of the climate threat, she said, while it had “abdicated responsibility” through its deference to the UNFCCC.

Benchmark for failure

The Millennium Development Goals have been criticised for uneven progress, with goals depending on countries’ desire for implementation.

The SDGs won’t be exempt. Doig said language on pushes for greater energy efficiency and clean energy objectives were “deliberately vague” to leave wiggle-room for fossil-fuel dependent countries.

And Australia ex PM Kevin Rudd questioned on Wednesday which body will be charged with ensuring achievement.

“Who on earth is responsible for their implementation, or are we setting up another benchmark for global failure?” he asked in a event in London on Wednesday.

Nonetheless, the final content will be important in the Paris agreement.

“We need Addis to work for New York to work for a stronger outcome in Paris,” Doig added.

The post UN weighs up climate threat in new development goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pasztor has served with the UN’s climate and environment bodies (Pic: Sergio Greif/Stockholm Environment Institute)

By Sophie Yeo

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Hungarian WWF official Janos Pasztor to advise him in the run-up to the UN climate talks this year in Paris.

Serving as assistant secretary-general on climate change, Pasztor will support efforts to sign off a new global climate deal in December, as well as help to mobilise climate action on the ground.

Pasztor has been WWF’s leading expert on conservation, policy and science for the last two years. Between 1993 and 2012, he held various positions in the UN, including within its climate body (UNFCCC).

Previous climate envoys chosen by Ban to spearhead climate change efforts include three former presidents and prime ministers: Ireland’s Mary Robinson, Ghana’s John Kufuor and Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg.

The appointments come as part of Ban’s effort to ramp up political will ahead of the crucial conference at the end of this year.

Pasztor would bring “absolute commitment” to the UN role, said Richard McLellan, director of Footprint at WWF International.

“Janos is a person who is focused on results and on making a real commitment to the process. He comes from Hungary but he’s really a global citizen and he has the best interest of the people and the planet at heart.”

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

By Megan Darby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Costa Rican is member of a powerful political dynasty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) July 27, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastoralist and farming communities in the Sahel have been hit by recurrent droughts (Source: Flickr/SOS Sahel UK)

By Megan Darby

The United Nations is appealing for funds to fight hunger in the drought-hit Sahel, as scientific studies highlight climate change threats to food production.

Some US$100 million is needed to make 7.5 million vulnerable people in the African region more resilient against food insecurity, according to the UN. A call for donations in February brought in just US$16 million.

Recurring droughts, combined with migration from conflict zones, are making chronic food insecurity worse, warned UN regional humanitarian coordinator Robert Piper.

“If we are going to break out of this cycle of chronic crises across the Sahel region, emergency assistance to vulnerable farmers and pastoralists has to be considered a top priority,” Piper said.

“The best way to reduce tomorrow’s emergency case-load is to help households protect their assets today.”

UN says more support urgently needed to tackle growing food insecurity in the #Sahel http://t.co/XFpwyjfnCB

— FAO in Emergencies (@FAOemergencies) July 28, 2014

Meanwhile, US scientists, writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, have found that climate change “substantially” increases the risk global crop yields will fail to keep pace with rising demand.

Researchers from Stanford University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) put data on weather and crops into computer models of climate.

They found that over the next 20 years, the likelihood of natural climate shifts slowing growth in corn and wheat production was 1 in 200.

When human-induced climate change was factored in, the odds rose to 1 in 10 for corn and 1 in 20 for wheat.

“I’m often asked whether climate change will threaten food supply, as if it’s a simple yes or no answer,” said Stanford professor and study co-author David Lobell.

“The truth is that over a 10- or 20-year period, it depends largely on how fast the Earth warms, and we can’t predict the pace of warming very precisely. So the best we can do is try to determine the odds.”

Report: Climate change could worsen Sahel conflicts says UN

Global yields of corn and wheat have been rising by around 1% or 2% a year for the past few decades.

The UN food body predicts a further 13% increase in output by 2030.

At the same time, demand for crops is expected to rise rapidly as the population grows, people in eat more and biofuels are increasingly used for energy.

Lobell and NCAR scientist Claudia Tebaldi were studying the likelihood of climate change reducing yield growth by 10% or more – potentially a “dangerous scenario”.

“We can’t predict whether a major slowdown in crop growth will actually happen, and the odds are still fairly low,” said Tebaldi.

“But climate change has increased the odds to the point that organisations concerned with food security or global stability need to be aware of this risk.”

Earlier this year the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned large investments may be needed to ensure some vulnerable communities cope with changing weather patterns.

Wheat yields are vulnerable to ozone, but air pollution controls can help

A separate study in the journal Nature Climate Change from MIT and Colorado State University highlighted an extra risk from air pollution.

Rising temperatures can increase production of ozone, the researchers found, which is known to damage crops.

Ozone pollution occurs when nitrogen oxides from motor vehicle exhaust, industrial and power station emissions react with volatile organic compounds in the air.

The effects vary by region and by crop. Wheat was found to be very sensitive to ozone, while corn reacted more to heat.

National and regional policies to cut air pollution could help limit the damage, the researchers found.

Under a pessimistic scenario, rates of malnourishment in the developing world increased from 18% to 27% by 2050. With stronger air quality controls, that increase was almost halved.

“An air quality clean-up would improve crop yields,” said lead author Colette Heald.

The results “show how important it is to think about the agricultural implications of air-quality regulations,” she added.

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Presidents Xi and Obama represent the two countries with the highest carbon emissions (Pic: Flickr/US Embassy The Hague)

By Megan Darby

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping are set to attend a climate summit hosted by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon in September.

The US and Chinese heads of state are on a “very long list of confirmations” to attend the one-day conference in New York, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

The summit is an opportunity for world leaders to showcase the action their countries are taking on climate change and to make fresh pledges.

Business, city and civil society leaders have also been invited to take the microphone with their contributions.

Figueres said: “It is a very exciting day, in which we will see played out in front of us the huge variety of climate action.”

The idea is to build momentum for a global treaty next year in Paris, but its success depends on buy-in from the top of major economies.

“We are very confident that heads of state will come,” Figueres told RTCC. Asked if that included China and the US, she said: “Yes, definitely.”

Obama’s office confirmed his participation to the National Journal.

A spokesperson from Ban Ki-moon’s office denied having a list of attendees, but said: “We are very encouraged by the large number of positive responses from heads of state and government and we are expecting as many of them as possible to attend to the summit.”

Over one million campaigners are expected to descend on New York the day before the summit starts, in what organisers are calling the “largest ever climate march“.

Emissions

The US and China are the two single largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

The two powers discussed climate change at high-level talks earlier this month and both have made steps towards cutting emissions.

In June, Obama’s administration announced curbs on pollution from fossil fuel power stations.

Meanwhile, China is steadily cutting the carbon intensity of its economic growth and has indicated it could present plans for an emissions cap as early as next year.

Figueres said the US announcement was “very welcome” but said more would be needed to reach a global deal in Paris.

“No country is doing enough to stay on the path of a 2C temperature rise,” she said. “The agreement in Paris will be looking at that.”

Countries are due to put forward plans for their national contributions to mitigating climate change by March 2015. “All countries are very very busy doing their homework,” said Figueres.

That includes Australia, which will still be expected to contribute despite a U-turn on its core green policy last week.

The country took the controversial decision to axe its carbon tax, which prime minister Tony Abbott said penalised businesses.

“That is not the end of the story,” Figueres said. “They repealed the carbon tax, which is one very specific policy measure that can be undertaken to address climate change. It is not the only policy measure.

“The challenge here for Australia is, since they are very committed to a global agreement in Paris, that means they need to go back to the drawing board.”

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A network of activists are planning the largest ever climate demonstration in September, to encourage world leaders to take action.

The People’s Climate March on 21 September is timed to show support for efforts to tackle climate change ahead of a summit in New York hosted by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

More than 500 green, faith-based and social groups have already signed up to take part in the People’s Climate March.

The organisers say the march will be “so large and diverse that it cannot be ignored”.

There will be a range of events leading up to and around the main march in Manhattan, New York City.

Plans for a parallel march in London are also under way.

The website explains: “We believe that world leaders will only act (or be able to act) on climate change when everyday people express the desire, and create the political mandate for them to do so.”

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Pic: Chuck Coker/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Tackling climate change is one of 17 goals included in the UN’s blueprint for its new post-2015 sustainable development agenda.

Diplomats passed the final document outlining the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals on Saturday, after 29 hours of negotiating.

The text, pieced together by representatives from 30 countries, will be passed on to the UN for discussion among all member states at the General Assembly in September.

Whether or not the document will contain a goal dedicated to climate change has concerned some countries and civil society groups.

While countries such as France, Peru, Mexico and Bangladesh have supported the inclusion of a goal on global warming, others, including China and India, had rejected these calls.

Supporters say that, without a dedicated goal on climate change, sustainable development more widely will be impossible.

In the balance

The goal on climate change could still be removed following further negotiations by the UN.

“It’s remarkable that we even got a dedicated goal given the politics,” said Farooq Ullah, executive director at the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, who attended the meeting in New York last week.

But he added that the future of the goal was by no means certain: “I would say it is one of the five really contentious issues that was being debated until the last moment.”

It is still possible that the 17 goals could be reduced, in order to make them more manageable. There are only eight Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015 and which the new framework will replace.

Bernadetter Fischler, UK co-chair of the Beyond 2015 group, said that she was concerned that the climate change goal would be one of the first to get the chop should this be the case.

This is because climate change is already covered by a separate UN framework, with a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions scheduled to be signed next in Paris next year.

In this case, climate change would have to be incorporated into the remaining goals – a process where the UN does “not have the greatest track record”, said Fischer. “It could easily drop through the cracks.”

The goal as it currently stands requires countries to strengthen their resilience to climate hazards, integrate climate change measures into national policies, and implement a pre-existing commitment by rich countries to donate US$ 100 billion a year from 2020 to tackle the problem.

But its lack of precise targets has left some observers disappointed, relying on imprecise designations where other goals invite quantified commitments.

“It’s the weakest, vaguest and the weirdest,” said Fischler. “It is the first one that’s going to be eaten by the wolf.”

The post UN row simmers over climate inclusion in development goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Joe Lodge/Flickr)

By Alex Kirby

Two new atlases provide clear visual evidence of the effect climate change and extreme weather can have on people and property.

The 10th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World is to be published on 30 September.

The publication’s geographer, Juan José Valdés, says the reduction in multi-year ice – ice that has survived for two summers – is so noticeable compared with previous editions that it is the biggest visible change since the breakup of the USSR.

“You hear reports all the time in the media about this,” he said. “Until you have a hard-copy map in your hand, the message doesn’t really hit home.” He believes atlases “open people’s eyes to what’s happening in the world.”

The Arctic sea ice has been retreating in the last 30 years or so by 12% each decade, NASA says. (On land the change is even more marked. Spring and autumn on the Greenland icecap have warmed by more than 3°C, although summer temperatures have not changed)

According to NASA’s Operation IceBridge the sea ice is now as much as 50% thinner than in previous decades, falling from an average thickness of 3.8 metres (12.5 feet) in 1980 to 1.9 m (6.2 ft) in recent years.

May 2014 represented the third lowest extent of sea ice for that month in the satellite record, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says.

Self-supporting

The ice loss is accelerated by what scientists call a positive feedback: the warming in effect fuels itself. Thin ice reflects light less effectively than thick ice, allowing more sunlight to be absorbed by the ocean, which further weakens the ice and warms the ocean even more.

The melting ice also triggers another feedback. Thinner ice is flatter and scientists say this allows melt ponds to accumulate on the surface, reducing the ice’s reflectiveness and absorbing more heat.

In National Geographic’s atlas the multi-year ice, which is older, is shown as a large white mass, with the maximum extent of sea ice – the pack ice that melts and refreezes each season – shown by a simple line.

This edition shows the area of multi-year ice is strikingly smaller than previously.

Some scientists say the atlas should show the total ice area at the end of the Arctic summer, including the remaining ice newly formed in the previous winter.

This total minimum cover is measured in September, while total maximum cover is measured in March, at the end of winter.

Omitting the minimum cover means ice one year old or less is not being shown, the critics say. But the mapmakers say they do not show the minimum extent because there is only so much information they can include without confusing users.

There is also criticism of the atlas’s reliance on a single year (the new edition uses 2012 data, an extremely low year for ice cover). The critics say this probably over-emphasises long-term trends.

But if 2013, a year with more ice, is shown, the mapmakers counter, it could under-emphasise the trend towards rising temperatures.

Underestimate?

The second publication, the Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes 1970-2012, is the work of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium.

Disasters caused by such extremes, it says, are increasing globally, killing people and slowing economic and social development by years or decades.

The period covered, the authors say, saw 8,835 disasters, 1.94 million deaths and US$2.4 trillion of economic losses resulting from droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, tropical cyclones and related health epidemics.

Preparations start in Geneva, Switzerland, on 14 July for the third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, to be held in Japan in March 2015 by the United Nations.

Jochen Luther of WMO told the Climate News Network: “It’s not necessarily the number of extreme events that is increasing, but the increasing exposure and vulnerability that turns them into disasters, as well as better reporting of them than in the past.”

The UN’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2013 said direct and indirect losses from natural hazards of all kinds had been underestimated by at least half because of problems with data collection.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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(Pic: Flickr/Señor Codo)

By Ed King

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latest update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Pic: APEC 2013/Flickr)

By Sophie Yeo

Climate experts have presented the UN with a report on how countries can club together to avoid world temperatures soaring to dangerous levels.

The report, delivered to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today in New York, lays out technical pathways on how the world’s 15 major emitters can make the deep decarbonisation needed to keep the planet below 2C.

The 281-page document calls for scaled up research and development into cleaner sources of energy and greater efficiency, which together will create the deep cuts to emissions needed to stem climate change.

The potential for deep decarbonisation is “heartening” but also “concerning” as “we are way off track”, said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which convened the study.

The solutions, he said, are “not as complex as finding the Higgs particle, it is not as complex the human genome project, it is not as complex as an eight year moon shot and returning Neil Armstrong safely back to earth.

“What we have to do is important, it is real, but it is not of that complexity … It is within reach, buut we’re just not making that investment yet.”

Country by country

The report is the first in depth study of country-specific pathways to deep decarbonisation.

It is intended to lay out options to countries ahead of a key UN conference in Paris in 2015, over which the French government will preside. Sachs led the report alongside Laurence Tubiana, the principle advisor to the French government on the UN’s climate treaty negotiations.

“The number one value of this project is that the national experts have been dealing with the national efforts and what it takes in their national context to be serious about 2C,” said Tubiana.

Many of the countries involved in the report will participate in the Major Economies Forum in Paris on Friday, including Australia, Russia, the US and China.

In Australia, the report recommends a coal-free diet, with grid-integrated renewables providing 100% of electricity.

In China, the authors suggest specific targets of around 1,000 GW of solar PV by 2050, and another 1,000GW provided by wind, 70% of which should be offshore.

In Mexico, the report focuses on the need for a cleaner transport system. Shifting to mass electrification of public transport could help to ease demand on its burdened roads while easing the shift to a cleaner country.

The current report is an interim edition that has been prepared ahead of a UN climate summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon on 23 September.

Following a public consultation and redraft, a new version will be presented to French President Francois Hollande in Spring 2015, ahead of the Paris conference.

“Change is in the air,” said Ban Ki-moon, at the launch of the report today. “Solutions exist, the race is on, and it’s time to lead.”

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Pic: David Clarke/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

The UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) will fail unless governments and businesses find an extra US$ 2.5 trillion a year to support them.

The World Investment Report 2014, which the UN launched today in Nairobi, found that between $3.3 trillion and $4.5 trillion would be needed in the developing world to deliver the goals as they appear in drafts so far.

Current investment in these sectors is around $1.4 trillion, creating an average investment gap of about $2.5 trillion.

The UN is due to release the hotly contested set of targets in 2015, which will deal with subjects including poverty, health, gender and climate change.

They will guide international development until 2030, replacing the millennium development goals (MDGs) which are due to expire next year.

“The SGDs, by their definition of goals for particular objectives for a particular infrastructure, require money,” Richard Bolwijn, one of the authors of the report, told RTCC.

A 2012 report from the OECD showed that the MDGs also faced a shortfall of around $120 billion a year in health, education and poverty expenditure.

A 2013 progress report by the UN showed that none of the MDGs had yet been achieved across all regions.

Tight budgets

With governments across the developed world facing budgetary constraints in the wake of the financial crisis, the report says that the bulk of this shortfall will have to be made up by the private sector.

“We are trying to get the international community coming up with the SDGs to define in parallel some concrete actions to boost private sector investment,” said Bolwijn, adding that this could come in the form of fundraising targets that would help to “focus the mind” of potential investors.

The UN’s new Green Climate Fund could play a part in raising some of the required capital. Board members hope it will be able to leverage billions in low carbon financing from the private sector.

Leading climate change economist Lord Stern has told RTCC trillions of dollars are needed to invest in low carbon infrastructure in the developing world, with the bulk coming from business.

Tough talks

Environmentalists are concerned that climate change may lose its position as a dedicated goal due to stiff opposition from some countries, notably Saudi Arabia.

Sven Harmeling of CARE International, who is following the talks, told RTCC that so far they had focused on specific goals, avoiding notoriously complex discussions on how the final selection will actually work.

“The negotiations haven’t really touched on means of implementation and finance,” he said. “This has become obvious again that this will become one key issue.”

REPORT: Climate clings to sustainable development goals

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN, said in the foreword to the report that it “offers a global action plan for galvanizing the role of businesses in achieving future sustainable development goals”.

But while the shortfall remains in the trillions, Bolwijn says that calculating the difference was the first step to closing it.

“I’m convinced it is difficult and should be difficult. But it is achievable,” he said.

“If we can manage to assign a rough guess for how much investment is needed to achieve the SDGs, you can actually work towards bringing that money on the table.”

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Pic: Number 10/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

China and the UK will “redouble” efforts to secure a new UN climate deal in 2015, the two countries said today.  

The joint statement was released as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang makes his first official visit to the UK since taking office last year.

The declaration highlighted that tackling climate change would also help reduce air pollution – a problem for both nations’ capital cities, but particularly Beijing.

“Both sides recognise that climate change and air pollution share many of the same root causes, as well as many of the same solutions. This constitutes an urgent call to action,” says the statement, issued by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change.

“We must redouble our efforts to build the global consensus necessary” for a deal in UN Paris set to be signed in Paris next year, the statement says, adding they will intensify policy discussions and boost concrete action to this end.

China, the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, will be central to the success of the deal, which will become the world’s first global climate agreement to bind both developed and developing countries.

“Both governments recognise that tackling climate change is fundamental to our future and have committed to reduce emissions while enhancing energy security by investing in nuclear power,” said UK Secretary for energy and climate change, Ed Davey.

“The joint statement with China reflects our shared intent to re-double efforts for an ambitious global agreement and domestic solutions to climate change.”

Oil

Premier Li’s visit, a three-day trip that is part of a wider European tour, will focus on trade deals between the UK and China. The two countries are supposed to sign around £18 billion in commercial agreements.

Despite strong words on climate change, it is predicted that much of this will come from deals on oil.

BP is expected to announce a long-term deal to supply over £5 billion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China, while Shell will sign a framework agreement to work with the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation on LNG projects across the world.

But the joint statement shows that climate change, and in particular the UN’s climate negotiations, remains a topic of mutual concern.

The new deal will support the low carbon transition in both countries, it says. The UK has committed to reducing its emissions 50% on 1990 levels by 2027, while China says it will reduce its emissions by 40-45% per unit of GDP by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.

UN deal

Air pollution in China has prompted tougher action on climate change at home, since it is largely caused by the coal plants and vehicles which are also mainly responsible for global warming.

A two-week UN gathering in Bonn, Germany, which wrapped up on the weekend helped push this deal one stage closer to completion.

The co-chairs running the negotiations have agreed to provide a text summarising countries’ positions – many still divided over key issues – by 15 July, which observers say will add clarity to the process.

China and the UK, as part of the EU negotiating bloc, remain at odds over key issues, such as how the new deal should distinguish between rich and poor countries.

The two countries have also committed to work together to support the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a climate conference that he will host in New York this September, at which he has invited world leaders to announce “bold actions”.

Neither UK prime minister David Cameron nor Chinese president Xi Jinping have yet confirmed whether they will attend the summit.

Alastair Harper, Green Alliance’s Head of Politics, commented: “It’s significant that the Prime Minister is working with the Chinese Premier to achieve a global climate deal. It would seem that David Cameron has firmly rejected Tony Abbot’s recent invitation to join the naughty table on slowing climate action.

“Given that a deal is now clearly both the United States’ and China’s top diplomatic priority, we have chosen the right company for our economy and place in the world. To build on this, the Prime Minister should formally accept Ban Ki-Moon’s invitation to September’s world leaders summit in order to leave his mark on the talks to come.”

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Pic: Michael Matti/Flickr

By Joy Hyvarinen 

This week the UN working group that is tasked with drafting a proposal for new global sustainable development goals (“SDGs”) is meeting in New York.

It is a critical meeting for global efforts to tackle climate change, in particular when it comes to helping the poor and vulnerable countries and communities that will take the hardest impacts from climate change.

There is a risk that the UN working group will decide that there is no need for a sustainable development goal on climate change and that instead climate change can be integrated under the other goals.

Joining up climate change and other sustainable development goals is important, but not having a stand-alone sustainable development goal on climate change would leave a critical gap in the UN post-2015 development agenda.

New targets

Almost 180 organizations, including FIELD, have written a letter to government representatives in New York to urge them to make sure that climate change is given the attention it deserves in the sustainable development goals, including a separate sustainable development goal on climate change.

The sustainable development goals will guide the international community’s efforts to promote development for all at a time when climate change is recognized as one of the greatest threats to development. Climate change needs a dedicated sustainable development goal.

The sustainable development goals will build on the eight Millennium Development Goals, most of which have a target year of 2015. The new goals are meant to be a fairly short list of punchy and inspirational overall goals, with more details in targets and indicators for each goal. There is pressure to reduce the number of proposed goals, but leaving climate change without a dedicated sustainable development goal is not the answer.

The world has experienced nothing like climate change before. It is creating unprecedented demands on international cooperation and unprecedented threats to poor and vulnerable countries and communities that are already struggling on the development frontline.

The poor and vulnerable should be at the centre of the sustainable development goals and the UN post-2015 agenda.

Negotiations

The UN working group is meant to report to the UN General Assembly by September this year with a proposal for the new sustainable development goals, so there is little time left for it to finalize its work.

At the start of the working group negotiations this week a revised list of sustainable development goals reportedly included climate change in one goal, but combined with promoting sustainable consumption and production. Changes to consumption and production are a crucial part of combating climate change, but climate change has many other dimensions and development implications.

There are separate on-going negotiations on a new climate change agreement under the UNFCCC, but there are no legal or other reasons why climate change should not be fully included in the sustainable development goals. On the contrary.

Report: Climate clings to sustainable development goals as debate intensifies

Currently the world is not on course to keep warming to the agreed global goal of 2C or less. The window of opportunity to still stay under the 2C limit is closing fast. Vulnerable countries argue that 2C is too much for them and the target should be 1.5C or less.

The negotiations on the 2015 climate change agreement currently seem unlikely to result in the deep emission reductions that the world needs.

In FIELD’s view this makes it increasingly important to create a second line of defence or safety net for the countries and communities that will take the hardest climate change impacts. The sustainable development goals and the UN post-2015 agenda should do that. Issues like adaptation and climate loss and damage are under negotiation in the UNFCCC, but it is unclear how much progress will be possible.

Even if there were progress in the UNFCCC negotiations, climate change is a development threat on a scale never seen before – it demands a sustainable development goal of its own.

Joy Hyvarinen is Executive Director of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development

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Pic: Bert van Dijk/Flickr

By Monique Barbut

In the last five years, we have seen the disastrous impacts of droughts, heat waves, cyclones, floods and flashfloods.

From the Philippines, Pakistan and the United States to the Middle East and Horn of Africa; death, food shortages, loss of homes and incomes or damage to infrastructure has followed in their wake. As disasters travel from one region to the next, many of us watch helplessly wondering what we can do about it.

Yet, everyone can do something that will make a difference. The battle against climate change will be won or lost at the local level, where you and I live.

Scientists agree that we can avoid catastrophe, if we stop emitting greenhouse gases today. However, we will still pay a price from the emissions we have produced so far. We know the impacts that different regions may face. What we do not know is where exactly the effects will show up and the extent of the damage.

Protecting the earth

There is lots of evidence to show that the resilience of the land is a strong determinant of how much damage will be done.

This means we have a lot more power to protect ourselves than we thought or have acted upon. If we give due attention to the land in our neighborhoods and local area we can take practical action that can reduce the costs of climate change to our family, community and the environment.

If we rehabilitate our soils so that they can filter and drain water better, we can reduce the occurrence of landslides, floods and flash floods. In regions where water is scarce, freshwater sources underground can recover and human, plant and animal migration can be reduced.

This land and ecosystem-based based approach to adaptation is such a powerful tool for positive change. It makes us personally able to do something to avoid disaster. When our individual ecosystem-level initiatives are spread widely enough across countries, regions and the world, they will bring about a global transformation from the ground up.

Sheep grazing is increasingly responsible for land degradation and desertification in the protected land of Vashlovani national park in Georgia. (Pic: United Nations Development Programme in Europe and CIS)

Ecosystem-based adaptation demands that we give attention to the management and in many cases the recovery of natural resources. This will reduce the potential for disaster and help us secure more food, energy and water for our everyday needs.

But I emphasize paying attention to the land because it is often the forgotten natural resource.

Each of us can do something at the local level that can make the difference. Let us ‘climate proof’ the land. Let us start today, during the observance of the World Day to Combat Desertification, to strengthen the health and well-being of natural resources to make sure the worst human suffering and economic losses of climate change are avoided.

We may not eliminate all the impacts of climate change but with healthy and productive land many tragedies are preventable.

Monique Barbut is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

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Pic: Thanh Mai Bui Duy/Flickr

By Ed King

The latest round of UN climate negotiations have concluded in Bonn, with signs of headway towards a global agreement scheduled for 2015.

The two-week meeting was the latest in a series of international forums aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists say are likely to lead to dangerous levels of warming.

Observers say there is now more clarity on the structure and elements of a text for the 2015 deal. The UN wants a first draft of the proposed treaty to be signed off at its main climate summit in Lima later this year.

“The good news is that countries put forward more details on their visions for the Paris climate agreement here in Bonn,” said Alden Meyer from the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

“But there remain sharp disagreements on the shape and scope of that agreement.”

Contributions

The UN co-chairs running negotiations say they will present a paper outlining key proposals and a range of suggestions by July 15.

One key sticking point appears to be what countries are expected to announce in their ‘national contributions’ towards a global climate deal, which the UN wants submitted by March 2015.

“Upfront information is essential for us to be able to establish whether the intended national contributions are fair and how far they collectively get us towards the goal of keeping warming below 2C,” said an EU spokesperson.

“Unless we can clearly articulate to the public what countries are going to put on the table, how are we going to have validation for the process being in track?”

Two-week UN Bonn talks ends today in positive mood, still long way to go for Paris climate treaty in 2015!

— Quamrul Chowdhury (@QuamrulChow2030) June 15, 2014

Developing countries want rich nations to include specific commitments on finance and technology assistance as well as emission reduction plans.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund is expected to channel much of the billions needed to invest in low carbon development, but so far it is a bank with no money.

Bangladesh negotiator Quamrul Chowdhury told RTCC that, after talks in Bonn, it is still unclear how a promised $100 billion by 2020 will be found by rich countries.

Report: Lack of finance holding up UN talks, say world’s poorest

“With no support, many developing countries will not be able to deliver concrete results,” said Mattias Söderberg from the ACT Alliance.

Negotiators and civil society groups credit positive signals from the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China, for a new spirit of cooperation at the Bonn session.

New US carbon standards for power plants and the prospect of a national carbon market in China by 2018 boosted hopes the countries are now committed to a new agreement.

“The engagement of Barack Obama in the climate talks and signals he is giving in bilateral talks to other leaders are encouraging for the Ban Ki-moon meeting and March 2015 deadline,” said Greenpeace climate policy advisor Martin Kaiser.

“The China minister was here – he made a positive speech that China is working on a coal cap and we expect China at the Ban Ki-moon summit to make substantial announcement on coal caps in several provinces and prepare to submit commitments in March 2015.”

Rapid adoption of results, short statements, good process management – #SB40, #UNFCCC

— Paul Watkinson (@pwatkinson) June 15, 2014

The EU says it will have its ‘pledge’ for the UN agreement signed off by national leaders in October, but other developed countries appear to be holding out for a delay.

WWF’s Tasneem Essop said Australia, Japan and Russia are pushing for more time to deliver their pledges, indicating they will not be ready by the first quarter of next year.

“Those timeframes are critical,” she said, warning that if pledges arrive later, there is unlikely to be enough time to work out if they are enough in total to avoid dangerous levels of warming.

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Pic: indiawaterportal.org/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Countries have ploughed on with the task of creating a new UN climate treaty over the past two weeks in Bonn, but a lack of money is still hampering progress, say the world’s poorest countries.

During two weeks of negotiations, there has been no “major advancement” in figuring out how developed countries will raise the US$ 100billion which they have promised to donate every year from 2020, according to Quamrul Chowdhury, the lead negotiator for the Least Developed Countries.

“The lack of finance and support are the serious issues and need urgent resolution in building trust in the whole climate negotiation process,” he said.

“The negotiations in Bonn are progressing at a very slow pace,” added Chowdhury, adding that the poor countries he represents believe that the talks “still falter in reaching key milestones to strike a robust, ambitious and fair Paris Protocol.”

All countries have said they will sign an agreement in Paris 2015 designed to stop climate change passing the 2C threshold, which scientists say would have severe impacts on humans and the environment.

Poorer countries say for this deal to work, they need these funds to invest in new clean energy systems, and prepare for future extreme weather events linked to global warming.

A UN-backed Climate Fund is in the pipeline, and now ready to receive funds. Supporters hope it will start distributing money at the start of 2015, but so far its pleas for a cash injection of $10-15 billion remain unanswered.

Confusion

Climate negotiators have been gathered in Bonn since 4 June to hammer out what this deal might look like, but there are many issues needing to be resolved.

Countries still need to decide the overall shape of the text. Legally, the draft text must be completed by May 2015, so that countries have time to examine it before the Paris meeting that December.

Last year at a UN meeting in Warsaw, countries agreed that the “elements” of this text should be on the table by Lima. But there is still considerable disagreement on what this actually means, says Alden Meyer from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Some people think you get agreements on the elements – what you’re trying to negotiate, what you’re trying to draft a legal text on – in Lima, and then you start the serious drafting process and legal work on it in 2015,” he said.

“I think other countries would like to see the legal drafting process start before then. Meyer added that Venezuela has already proposed the formation of a legal team to start drafting the text – a move which most countries viewed as “premature”.

In a wrapping up session on Thursday, countries discussed how the text should be composed, with some supporting a document drawn up by the co-chairs, and others supporting a synthesis of contributions from the different negotiating blocs.

Some fear that the latter option could lead to an enormous text that will be difficult to condense at final negotiations.

Contributions

Countries must also decide exactly what they will contribute to this deal in ‘intended nationally determined contributions’ (INDC), which must be submitted by March 2015.

Some say they only want to make pledges on how to reduce emissions, while others are pushing for a more comprehensive package that includes finance, adaptation and technology.

Ronny Jumeau, who represents the small island states, said that too many negotiators are still complaining they don’t understand the “mythical creature” of INDCs, and not enough working to come up with a definition. “After all, how can we start preparing our NDCs if we don’t know what it is?” he said.

What countries have to submit will be one of the most high profile issues in forthcoming discussions of the new treaty, said Sven Harmeling of CARE International, as it will determine the breadth of action that countries will have to take after 2020 to tackle climate change.

“Some countries want to use it to ensure high profile of various aspects,” he said. Whether pledges on finance and adaptation receive the same legal treatment as mitigation contributions remains a politically wrought topic at the talks.

There has also been little development on one of the thorniest issues of the negotiations – whether the division between developed and developing countries enshrined in the original Convention should remain in the new agreement. It is a problem that may require ministers to untangle, said Meyer.

“Between those two issues, differentiation and finance, there is not agreement on the nature of the outcome that we’re trying to have in Paris, so that is influencing negotiating strategy,” he said.

Jumeau added: “I hope I’m wrong, but why do I get the feeling that we’ll still be negotiating in Paris?”

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(Pic: G7/Flickr)

By John McGarrity

The G7’s support for UN climate talks and efforts to cap a rise in global CO2 are contradicted by  moves to beef up energy security using domestic supplies of gas and coal, green groups said following a summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, UK and the US said the crisis in Ukraine meant that energy security would be placed at the centre of the bloc’s agenda, but campaigners claim the G7 will favour gas over renewables, and promote the use of coal by promising to install carbon capture and storage.

“Energy dependence drives dangerous climate change as much as it fuels conflicts. G7 leaders might sound like they agree, but they’re bluffing. Their plan for energy security focuses on swapping Russian oil and gas for dirty and risky energy from elsewhere,” Greenpeace said in a statement.

It added: “Let’s not kid ourselves: timid steps by Obama and the EU to cut carbon emissions are not enough.”

However President Obama on Wednesday that the US had shown its determination through a plan announced earlier this week to cut emissions from power plants by 2030, calling on other countries to participate in a “global effort”.

He added that energy diversification and energy efficiency could be combined to make the US and EU “not only more politically secure and economically secure but also more environmentally secure.”

Nuclear potential

Building on an EU summit in Rome last month, the G7 said  the world’s most economically powerful democratic countries should develop domestic sources of energy, such as gas, and make it easier to import and export the fuel through pipelines and LNG terminals.

While the G7 called for increased use of renewable energy, it added that countries should encourage the use of technologies that work as “a baseload energy source”, which would leave the door open to coal as well as nuclear.

“Only a shift to an efficient energy system run fully on renewables can free our economies from the shackles of energy dependence,” Greenpeace said, against growing concerns that the spat between G7 countries and Russia will be a boon for the fossil fuel industry in North America and the EU.

Critics of renewable energy say intermittent supply of wind and solar are an unreliable and a very expensive alternative to Russian gas, imports of which the EU wants to steer away from in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

The US and the UK have argued that exploiting indigenous supplies of shale gas and an expansion of gas trading would lessen Russia’s clout in international energy markets.

The UN has asked countries that make up the G7 – all major emitters of greenhouse gases – to say by the first quarter of next year how much CO2 they are prepared to cut in future decades and what policies and changes in energy use will be deployed to meet these targets.

The submissions are intended to form the basis of negotiation at a climate summit in Paris at the end of 2015, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocol could be agreed.

Divisions?

The G7’s call for countries “that are ready to do so,” to communicate the measures in the first three months of next year reflects tensions within the grouping and the G20 about when submissions to the UN’s climate arm, according to Jake Schmidt, an expert on global climate policy.

G7 countries reaffirm commitment to propose #climate targets in early 2015-Canada & Australia were blocking http://t.co/6W11yzqOTh

— Jake Schmidt – NRDC (@jschmidtnrdc) June 5, 2014

Australia, which hosts a G20 summit In July, has blocked climate policy from the official agenda, reflecting the scepticism of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, while Canada is keen to defend its plans to ramp up exports of oil from tar sands at UN climate talks.

G7 and G20 summits will be soon followed by a high-level meeting organised by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in September, which aims to speed up co-operation ahead of the Paris climate summit.

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Pic: European Parliament/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

The EU will confirm today that it is on track to overachieve on its pre-2020 climate targets by 4.5%, which it hopes will provide an incentive for other countries to boost their own ambitions during a UN meeting taking place this week in Bonn.

The 28-state bloc, plus Iceland, is on track to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions 24.5% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, saving an additional 5.5 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent – equal to over one year of emissions within the EU.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the EU agreed to reduce its emissions by 20%, but they say their success in implementing renewables and energy efficiency schemes has allowed them to overshoot this goal.

The announcement comes as ministers meet in Bonn, Germany, to discuss how countries can close the ’emissions gap’ between the amount of carbon dioxide that nations have committed to cut by 2020 so far and the amount they need to cut if the world is to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.

Despite the falling price of renewables, opportunities for efficiency and increasing efforts to impose a price on carbon, current policies mean that the world remains on track to exceed an internationally agreed limit of 2C.

‘Determined policy action’

Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner, said that it was “crucial” to increase efforts to combat climate change before 2020.

“The EU will substantially over-achieve its pre-2020 Kyoto Protocol emission targets,” she said. “This is thanks largely to over a decade of determined policy action by the EU and Member States.

“We are making a significant contribution to closing the ‘ambition gap’ between what the world needs to do and what countries intend to do by the end of the decade.”

She added that other major economies should now step up their ambition. The EU has offered to increase its own target to a 30% reduction if others indicate they are willing to undertake comparable action.

After 2020, the UN-brokered deal on climate change will come into effect. The nature and extent of this agreement is still under discussion. The EU has faced criticism that its 2030 target of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases, which will form the basis of its contribution to this deal, is under-ambitious considering its current progress on its 2020 goals.

Negotiations on both pre- and post-2020 ambition will progress this week during meetings in Bonn.

Yannis Maniatis, Minister for Environment, Energy and Climate Change of Greece, which currently holds the presidency of the EU Council, said: “This meeting needs to make solid progress towards agreeing on the information that countries should provide when they propose their contribution towards reducing emissions under the post-2020 agreement.

“Agreement on such information is essential to ensure that contributions are transparent and can be fully understood. Bonn must also prepare the ground for a decision on ways to step up pre-2020 global emission reductions. The EU wants decisions taken on both of these issues at the Lima climate conference in December.”

RTCC’s Sophie Yeo will be reporting from the 2014 UN climate talks in Bonn from Thursday 5 June

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Pic: B Gilmour/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

A UN dating service for countries tackling climate change has generated its first couple – a partnership between Austria and Georgia on sustainable forests.

Austria has agreed to provide almost US$ 2million to Georgia, which will help the country to restore the forests in its Borjomi-Bakuriani region. This 45,000 hectare area has the potential to store significant volumes of CO2, and will make a significant contribute to Georgia’s efforts to tackle climate change.

The pairing is the first of its kind since the UN’s climate body launched the service in October last year. Developing countries can submit their plans to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to this registry, which developed countries are then able to fund.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres congratulated Austria and Georgia on debuting the tool.

“This first success highlights the enormous potential of the new registry as a transparent, efficient clearing house that matches financial, technology and capacity-building support from the developed world to the needs developing nations have defined themselves to act on climate change,” she said.

“It is a clear invitation to other countries and organizations to continue to populate the registry and boost the international cooperation between developed and developing countries in reducing and limiting greenhouse gas emissions.”

There are currently around 40 projects in the registry waiting for international support. These range from plans for biomass boilers in Serbia to a 100% renewable energy target in the Cook Islands.

Many developing countries see an increase in financial support as key to their ability to implement ambitious climate targets.

The slow delivery of funds to date has impacted attempts to negotiate a new UN climate change treaty, as it has diminished levels of trust between developed and developing countries, and made poor nations reluctant to put forward plans that they do not have the financial capacity to deliver.

The Green Climate Fund is one financial body that will be key to supporting national mitigation projects. After a slow start, a meeting this month in South Korea saw this fund agree on the final elements needed to become operational, meaning that it could start to receive donations as soon as 2015.

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Ban Ki-moon is greeted by Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. (Pic: UN Photo/Mark Garten)

By Sophie Yeo

China must provide “global leadership” in the fight against climate change, said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Shanghai yesterday.

The UN chief is visiting China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, ahead of the climate change summit that he will convene in September, where world leaders are invited to make “bold pledges” on how their country can tackle global warming.

China should lead this global effort, Ban stressed during a talk to the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, and highlighted existing government actions to address the country’s rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions.

“Here in China you are on the frontlines of the fight – with new carbon markets, large investments in renewable energy and strong new laws on pollution,” he said.

Since arriving in China on Sunday, Ban Ki-moon has held discussions with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. According to a UN spokesperson, Ban told Li that he hoped to see China present both its national and global climate vision during his September Summit.

In 2009 China pledged to reduce its output of greenhouse gases 40-45% per unit of GDP by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. Since Chinese emissions continue to grow, this does not equal a reduction in absolute emissions.

Development goals

Due to the rate of its greenhouse gas emissions, China’s contribution to a 2015 UN climate deal will be crucial to the global push to stop global warming reaching dangerous levels. China is engaging in intense diplomacy with other large emitters from the developed world, particularly the US, in order to figure out how to shape such a deal.

Ban also highlighted the importance of shaping the UN’s new development framework, called the Sustainable Development Goals, which will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. The new targets, he said, will help to end extreme poverty and “allow us to focus on sustainable development as a model for the global economy.”

The impacts of climate change are already being felt across the world, said Ban: “Key resources – energy, food, land, water, clean air – are in progressively shorter supply.”

Scientists, economists and the military have all sounded the alarm on the negative consequences of a warmer world.

A report last week from ratings agency Standard and Poor (S&P) warned that climate change could threaten sovereign credit ratings, with vulnerable countries being hit the hardest. Bangladesh, Senegal and Vietnam were the placed at the bottom of S&P’s ranking of vulnerable countries.

The report explained: “This is in part due to their reliance on agricultural production and employment, which can be vulnerable to shifting climate patterns and extreme weather events, but also due to their weaker capacity to absorb the financial cost.”

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Pic: World Bank Photo Collection

By Sophie Yeo

World leaders will take a trip into uncharted territory this September, as they travel to New York to answer the call of the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

It is rare that the world of climate policy offers an opportunity for novelty. Climate change negotiations are a stage upon which the same lines, the same disputes, have been rehearsed to exhaustion since they began in 1992.

But Ban Ki-moon’s request that world leaders come to him personally and deliver “bold pledges” on how they intend to tackle climate change is different.

At this one-day Summit, scheduled for 23 September, there will be no official negotiations or political trade-offs. Optimistic observers have even suggested there may be no animosity.

Instead, this is an opportunity for heads of states to come together – for the first time since the disastrous UN conference in Copenhagen in 2009 – alongside leaders from business, finance and civil society, and make individual pledges on how their countries intend to put a stop to climate change.

Pressure

Expectations for the Summit are high. If the pressure not to disappoint Ban Ki-moon is not enough, prime ministers and heads of states will realise that their assembled presence means that world will, for this one day at least, be focused on their personal level of commitment to create a safe planet for the future.

While this Summit is organised by the UN, it is separate from the negotiations that take place under the banner of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At these annual meetings, policymakers gather to thrash out with one another how a global treaty might look, which must be agreed by consensus between all countries – not an easy task, as the last 20 years have amply demonstrated. And the deadline is looming: countries have agreed to seal the deal in Paris next year.

While the UNFCCC negotiations are attended by environment ministers, the ‘leaders only’ set-up of Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit reflects the reality of how the content of the UN’s 2015 climate treaty will actually be decided, says Michael Jacobs, a former climate change advisor to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“Getting the leaders together to make commitments at this stage changes the game,” he told RTCC. “Climate policy is really economic policy, and you don’t control economic policy at national level if you’re an environment minister.

“You have to have your economy and finance ministers and your leader behind it, and getting leaders to focus again on climate is new. It hasn’t been done since 2009, and we’ve got a lot of new leaders since then.”

Meanwhile, giving countries an opportunity to replace negotiations with individual pledges is akin to declaring a one-day armistice: it allows leaders to declare their own ambitions without biting at others for their lack thereof – or worrying about being bitten.

On the surface, says Jacobs, this should lead to a more “harmonious” encounter of “mutually supportive ambition”, compared to the general discord that normally permeates negotiations.

What will be pledged?

So far so good: but once everyone has shaken hands and finished sharing fond memories of their last meeting in Copenhagen, what happens then? The unknown territory of this kind of meeting means that there is no recognised protocol for leaders to adopt at this Summit.

Last week, a high-level meeting in Abu Dhabi allowed the UN to smooth over any confusion. According to a presentation by UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr, leaders should “provide vision of national effort and international goals” and “make announcements of future ambition and action through national action”.

Governments are already expected to make national pledges on their reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to be incorporated into the UN’s 2015 climate treaty.

Pledges at the Ban Ki-moon summit are likely to be made on a more flexible, ‘bottom-up’ approach, based upon individual sectors – and are almost certain to involve no numbers.

Ban Ki-moon helped ministers prepare for Summit at least week’s Abu Dhabi Ascent

Elina Bardram, who is head of international relations at the EU Climate Commission, told RTCC that Ban Ki-moon is looking for examples of inspiring existing action and future commitments. And selfies. “He wants to have family photos of leaders who are committing in different action areas,” she said.

During the Abu Dhabi meeting, participants, including over 100 ministers, were invited to take part in discussions on eight topics, which amounted to “effectively a menu for countries to identify the kinds of announcements they might make”, said Jacobs.

These consisted of energy, transportation, forests, short-lived climate pollutants, cities, agriculture, finance, and resilience, adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

Thomas Lingard, Global Advocacy Director at Unilever, told RTCC that the discussions within these forums progressed well. “Many of the breakout sessions on different issues had real momentum behind them,” he said.

“The ministers we spoke to, including Greg Barker from the UK, were very focused on pushing for real action from stakeholders in all sectors that could deliver offers of meaningful progress at the September summit.”

Bardram said that she hoped that member states would come forward with individual initiatives, as well as potentially with actions created by new coalitions within the bloc.

“I think it’s going to be a unique opportunity, so if it’s not taken up then it will be an omission on the side of the international partners,” she said. “The Commission is 100% behind trying to do its utmost to make sure the visibility and the opportunity is not missed.”

Tension

But despite positive words, much remains to be done if countries really plan to deliver promises of new action at the Summit, rather than simply reiterating previous actions or making flimsy statements about the need for ambition. “What Ban Ki-moon has said is ‘come with something, don’t come with just rhetoric,’” says Jacobs.

And is it really possible that, even under the watchful eye of the Secretary General, countries can completely step out from their trenches?

Despite an overall positive ambiance during ministerial meetings last week, differences in perception are still evident, says the EU’s Bardram.

Ban Ki-moon’s Summit is about kickstarting the race to the top, she said, “but many, particularly least developed countries, don’t feel empowered to participate in a race.”

In past years, poor countries have argued that the delay of rich nations to provide adequate climate finance has prevented them from making pledges, for fear that they will not be able to afford to deliver on them.

The decision to invite businesses in such force is also threatening to rankle, adds Bardram, with developing countries in particular saying that the focus on “transforming the economy” means that “humanity is somehow forgotten.”

Venezuela has expressed concern that the agenda is too pro-business, says Jacobs, and has suggested that the meeting “must also be about poverty and equity and local communities, and not just about what businesses can do,” – an intervention that he says was widely accepted, and is likely to be reflected in the final agenda.

But overall, the feeling remains hopeful that the Summit will yield concrete action: and it seems there is still every chance that when heads of state gather in the Ban Ki-moon booth for their souvenir family photo, the camera will not capture grimaces, but smiles.

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Pic: GUE/NGL/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Reducing China’s greenhouse gas emissions is central to global discussions on tackling global warming, says the EU’s top climate official.

Speaking at the end of a visit to the country, Connie Hedegaard told RTCC the question of when China’s soaring emissions will reverse is a now a question of global significance, and one that she has discussed with government officials in the past week.

“They will have to do their calculations, but it is of relevance to the whole world when Chinese emissions will peak,” she said in an interview.

“Things have to be differentiated, and it is clear why the Chinese emissions have not peaked yet, but it’s clear that the sooner that peak point will be the better.”

Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions peaked in in 1990, and they have also started to decline in the US.

But China’s carbon pollution levels have risen sharply in recent decades as its economy has boomed, lifting millions out of poverty while at the same time devastating its natural environment.

Peak

Exactly when China’s emissions will start to decline is unclear, and depends on the strength of government policy.

A recent study by Chinese energy expert Jiang Kejun suggested that if China continues with its determined efforts to tackle climate change, emissions could peak as early as 2025. This would depend upon massive investment in renewables and a nationwide carbon pricing scheme.

The question will need to be tackled as countries gather to decide upon a global climate change treaty, which will be signed off under the UN in Paris next year.

Connie Hedegaard meets China’s Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua during trip to China this week (Pic: Isaac Valero)

As the world’s biggest emitter, China’s participation in the deal will be crucial in determining whether the international efforts are enough to keep global warming below a globally agreed limit of 2C, after which the effects of climate change become more severe.

But there are still a number of differences between China and the EU that need to be smoothed out before this deadline, including the controversial issue of whether developing countries such as China should have the same legal obligations  as developed countries under the new treaty.

Divisions

China and other like-minded countries have argued that the old division between developed and developing countries should be enshrined in the new agreement, as it was in the Kyoto Protocol. Others, including the US and EU, say that the booming economies of countries such as China, India and Brazil mean that efforts must be universal.

A recent submission to the UN by Chinese climate negotiators indicated just how far they are from resolving the point, demanding that developed countries increase their emissions reduction pledges to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 – the level of cuts that the EU is likely to set as its 2030 target.

The issue needs to be reconciled so that work can begin on the more substantially difficult issues of the new agreement, said Hedegaard. A recent UN text attempting to distil all the views of the different countries suggests that these difficulties will be many.

Now is not the time to be talking about “red lines”, she said.

“There will be crunch issues, and we should just be mindful that very soon we come to the crunch issues, else I would be concerned there won’t be time.

“Paris is 18 months from now. There are many difficult issues to be dealt with before we get there, so the sooner we can clarify exactly where are the most difficult issues we must deal with at the political level, the better, and I hope this visit will help us identify where those are.”

Domestic action

Domestically, it is clear that the Chinese government is committed to tackling climate change, said Hedegaard.  A recent UN report pointed out that 2013 was the first year in which Chinese investment in renewables was larger than Europe’s. Under its 12th Five Year Plan, China has committed to reduce its emissions intensity per unit of GDP by 17% by 1015.

Public anger about obvious environmental degradation – including hazardous air and water quality – has demanded engagement with the issue at the highest level of government, with President Xi Jinping committing to cutting polluting and creating an ‘eco-civilisation’.

Today, China’s National People’s Congress voted to amend the country’s 1989 Environmental Protection Law, which imposes harsher penalties for polluters and provides protection for whistleblowers, for the first time in 25 years.

“I think it was interesting yesterday that it was the first vice premier who wanted to meet with us. He was very much into the issue, very much into the strategy they are working with in China, so in that sense there’s a very positive impression of what they’re planning to achieve domestically,” said Hedegaard.

But, she added, “There are some questions as to how they translate that into international talks.”

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Source: Theis Kofoed Hjorth

By Sophie Yeo

Avoiding catastrophic climate change is still within reach, but it will require a massive shift to renewable energy, according a UN report on climate change.

The changes are both technically and financially possible, said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today, and would reduce the rate of economic growth by just 0.06% a year.

“It does not cost the world to save the planet,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the report.

The latest report in the UN’s three-part series deals with how to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The previous two have outlined the underlying science and the impacts of climate change.

5C rise

Despite global efforts to tackle climate change, emissions have continued to rise since 1970, and have accelerated over the past decade.

“Total anthropogenic GHG emissions were the highest in human history from 2000 to 2010,” warns the report, adding that population and economic growth have been key drivers of this increase in emissions.

Edenhofer said that, while the efforts required to combat global warming would come at a cost, it would not mean sacrificing overall economic growth, which is estimated to increase at between 1.6 and 3% per year.

The price tag also did not take into account the co-benefits such as improved air quality, alongside the potential added expense of increased climate impacts.

Without these efforts, the world risks warming by almost 5C by 2100, far exceeding the UN’s agreed target of limiting average global temperature to 2C, a which point the risks of climate change become unmanageable.

“Climate policy is not a free lunch, but it could be a lunch worthwhile to buy,” said Edenhofer.

Policy

While the report steers clear of prescribing policy options, it has clear relevance to those trying to come up with international and domestic solutions to the problem of ever rising emissions.

The report stresses the need for a united global effort in tackling climate change—something that the world hopes to achieve in 2015 in a new UN treaty.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, said: “What comes out very clearly from this repot is the fact that the high speed mitigation train would need to leave the station very soon, and all of global society would need to get on board.”

Climate change is not a problem that takes place within a vacuum, and decisions taken by policymakers have to balance the problems of global development, and a fair approach to emissions reductions that takes into account controversial issues including each countries’ capacity to deal with climate change and their historical responsibility for the problem.

“Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently … The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective cooperation,” it says in the report.

EU Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said: ”The report is clear: there really is no plan B for climate change. There is only plan A: collective action to reduce emissions now.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity.”

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Drought leaves dead and dying animals in Kenya (Source: Oxfam/Brendan Cox)

By Sophie Yeo

Adaptation should not be seen as the “politically easy” option when governments are dealing with climate change, warns a top UN official.

Margareta Wahlström, the UN’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said that the action required to prepare for the now inevitable impacts of a warmer world need to be “drastic”.

Her view challenges those of many sceptics, who have argued that adaptation should now be at the heart of climate change policy as the cheaper and easier way of tackling the problem. The alternative – a massive overhaul of the world’s energy systems – provides immense challenges economically, politically and socially.

“We need to remove the sense that one choice is politically easier than the other,” Wahlström told RTCC in an interview.

“Both of them are quite complicated for people today, for the societies and strapped governments that feel this involves a lot of money and they really don’t have enough financial resources to make these choices.

“Whereas we know that the choices will be much more expensive if you have to wait 10 or 20 years to make them.”

Irreversible

The UN’s latest blockbuster report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the state of climate science focused on the impacts of climate change, what the world can do to prepare for them – and what it can’t.

The report weighs heavily on a particular point: climate change will inevitably cause risks across all continents, and these need to be managed. It is a point that Wahlström has long been making herself.

“They’ve clearly said that the factors that drive climate change are on a path that are in some cases irreversible,” she explained. “The triggers that have been put in motion already require that we manage risk for a long time.”

She added that “absolutely too little” had been invested so far in adaptation, as governments have focused on what can be done to prevent climate change.

Her observation is borne up by the figures. According to analysis by the World Resources Institute, of the US$ 35billion raised in climate finance by rich countries, only 17% was ringfenced towards adaptation projects. Meanwhile, the pot of money called the Adaptation Fund has been forced to put projects on hold while it scrambles to raise adequate donations year on year.

Source: World Resources Institute

This has left countries vulnerable to the impacts that climate change will have, and the IPCC report shows that these are many. Flooding, food insecurity and water scarcity are some of the issues that it says will affect the poorest most over coming decades as the world warms up.

Scepticism

There are many sceptics who would welcome a shift in policy away from mitigation towards adaptation.

Adaptation is the better approach, wrote Conservative peer Matt Ridley in the Spectator last week, as it yields quick results that enable people to cope with “anything the weather might throw at you”. Mitigation, on the other hand, requires every country make deep cuts to their emissions in order to keep global warming to safe levels.

But Wahlström emphasised that it was wrong to use adaptation as an “excuse” – partly because the world still has a responsibility to mitigate, and partly because the effort required to adapt to climate change is substantial in itself, requiring a much more precise understanding than we have today.

“Even adaptation today means some really tough choices for people,” she said. “We should not shift to adaptation as a way of giving up on our future, but just trying to make it a little bit better. That’s no solution. We need to be very drastic.”

The one sense in which adaptation is politically easier is that it deals with timeframes that people now can understand, she says. Efforts so far have tackled the problem of climate change through mitigation “as if that timeframe that was understandable for human beings,” she says. “I think it’s clear that it’s not.”

Adaptation reinforces that climate change is an issue that is already affecting people, and creates solutions that can tackle it today, she says. Efforts to cut the use of fossil fuels, on the other hand, have yet to pay dividends – despite two decades of international negotiations, emissions continue to rise.

“We need to stop talking about it as something that’s only concerning the future. Climate change is today already.”

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Source: Pic: Flickr/Christopher Michel

By Sophie Yeo

The President of the Marshall Islands is the first world leader to confirm his attendance at Ban Ki-moon‘s climate change summit this September.

Christopher Loeak said that he would be at the meeting, which will take place at the side lines of the UN’s General Assembly, where he will announce “new initiatives and bold actions” to tackle climate change.

“I will be there, and all of your leaders must be there too,” he told climate envoys who have assembled this week in the Marshall Islands for a meeting of the ‘Cartagena Dialogue’ – a group of 30 countries that hold discussions outside of traditional alliances with the aim of achieving a strong treaty to combat climate change in 2015.

Ban’s summit is one of the last opportunities for nations to come forward with their own contributions towards the proposed 2015 agreement before the official deadline of March next year.

Many hope it will be an opportunity for politicians to ratchet up the level of ambition with promises of tougher carbon cuts of financial pledges – but no world leader had definitively said they would attend until now.

If Loeak’s call is heeded by the other countries represented at this week’s meeting, it could be a key step in moving the process forward.

Australia, the EU, Germany, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates all take part in Cartagena discussions, each with a wide sphere of influence inside the UN negotiations.

The US will be represented by its lead climate negotiator Trigg talley this week.

With the world waiting to see what the US will offer to the international deal, President Obama’s attendance in New York will be crucial if Ban’s gathering of government heads is to have a serious impact.

In an interview with RTCC last month, the UK’s climate change envoy Sir David King said that the summit “had to be a success.” But, he said, “no one wants to go as a head of state unless they have a clear announcement they want to make.”

Science warning

This week’s discussions are taking place in the shadow of the UN climate science panel’s latest report on the impacts of climate change, which was released yesterday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) painted a bleak picture for small island states like the Marshall Islands, predicting that 15% of all islands would disappear with 1 metre of sea level rise.

Due to the level of carbon dioxide already emitted, the oceans are already ‘locked’ into a rise around 1.3m. Given this context, it is not surprising that the Marshall Islands are already trying to lead the way on tackling climate change.

Last September, the government orchestrated a Majuro Declaration, signed by the leaders of 13 Pacific Islands countries, which set out ambitious targets on renewable energy and “to create a safe space for governments and others to say that they will do more than what they have committed to do so far,” said Loeak.

He added: “This is exactly what the Secretary-General is asking of us, and this group needs to lead the way.”

Firm steps

In a video address to the delegates, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that it was important to take “firm steps” at an international level this year to tackle climate change.

“The immense challenge of climate change is materialising, and nowhere is it more evident than the Small Island Developing States,” she said. “The Cartagena Dialogue is a great opportunity to find common ground and align approaches for the international negotiations.

“Too often parties are not working across groups to find results, talking at each other as opposed to with each other, and staying in their silos.”

A UN spokesperson confirmed to RTCC that they had not yet received any confirmations from world leaders on whether they would attend.

“This will be on the margins of the General Assembly, and basically we’re holding the climate summit so all the world leaders will be here at the same time. As of now, we don’t have any names,” they said.

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Ban Ki-moon prepares to go sledging with PMs of Denmark and Greenland (Source: UN Spokesperson)

By Sophie Yeo

The dangers of global warming cannot be ignored, said Ban Ki-moon during a Greenland visit to assess how the Arctic is being affected by rising temperatures.

Flanked by the Prime Ministers of Denmark and Greenland, the UN Secretary General highlighted the need for rapid action from the world’s most senior politicians in order to avoid the impacts of climate change.

“We have to take action now. The time is now, and I’m very much committed to working with world leaders,” he said. “The problem doesn’t go away by being silent.”

The trip to Greenland is the latest attempt by the Secretary General to hoist climate change up the political agenda before his landmark climate summit in September, which will take place in New York alongside the UN General Assembly.

Leaders’ summit

The UN chief wants heads of government attending his September summit to bring “bold pledges” to tackle climate change, which could be incorporated into the international climate change treaty that the UN hopes to sign off in 2015.

Governments have committed to limit warming to less than 2C above pre industrial temperatures, although the IPCC says the world could hit 3-4C by the end of the century.

Danish PM and #UNSG Ban Ki Moon press brief in Uummannaq – “the (climate) problem doesn’t go away by being silent” pic.twitter.com/gYaqzOI1as

— Jesper Zølck Felbo (@zolckfelbo) March 26, 2014

No leaders have yet committed to attending Ban’s summit, although those close to the UN process say it is unlikely many would snub the event.

Former Norway prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, one of Ban’s climate envoys for the meeting, told RTCC it will be an opportunity to remind leaders how critical this issue is, and try and cement some kind of raised political awareness ahead of negotiations on a global agreement.

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By John McGarrity

A UN-led initiative to slow deforestation – including a possible carbon offset market that would pay people not to cut down trees – will fail unless indigenous peoples are given ownership of credits generated from their lands, a new report said today.

The report, by a coalition of US green and human rights groups, said host countries had yet to clarify who is the rightful owner of lands that would be protected under a future worldwide forest market,  part of a UN initiative also known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).

“Countries have not made sufficient progress in clarifying tenure rights. This presents a risk for communities, governments, investors, to the forests – and therefore is a risk to the global viability of REDD+ – as a goal or as a carbon market,” said the Rights and Resources Intitiative, which co-ordinated the report.

REDD+ is intended to prevent the cutting down or burning of trees through investment from rich countries to pay poor ones a fee to protect forest from loggers or farmers clearing land for pasture.

The destruction of the world’s forests is estimated to account for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions through the CO2 released when trees are chopped down and burnt, while intact they act a sink or store of carbon.

Report: will REDD+ be the saviour of the world’s rainforests?

Climate talks in Warsaw last year agreed funding for countries that want to prepare for a future forestry carbon market or fund, but failed to adequately address the question of land rights, the report said.

It added that host country governments could take control of land rights in the absence of clear laws and recognition of who owns the forest, the report added.

Of 23 host countries surveyed by the report, only Mexico and Guatemala had begun to define who had rightful ownership to areas that could earn forestry carbon credits, the report found.

“The complex financial mechanisms needed to implement REDD+ programs tend to create opaque conditions, promote the lack of transparency, and impose high participation and transaction costs on those who can least afford them,” the report added.

However the report said carbon markets could work efficiently and protect land rights citing the example where community rights had been recognised in the exploitation of natural resources.

Environmental groups say unscrupulous companies have failed to consult properly with local people about deals to sell their carbon rights, while the high level of corruption in many host countries has made many investors wary.

Above all, the lack of progress of UN climate talks hasn’t yet mapped out whether a forest carbon market should be used to help rich countries meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.

So far, most of the money for REDD has been pledged through carbon funds, most notably $1-billion of finance promised by Norway.

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Source: CAPRA Initiative

By Sophie Yeo

The deadline for countries to deliver new pledges on how they will tackle climate change is “too late”, according to the world’s least developed countries (LDCs).

In a document submitted to the UN’s climate body today, the world’s 49 poorest countries said that all countries need to move fast in declaring how they will contribute to a new climate change treaty to be signed off in Paris, 2015.

“The deadline and the process for delivering pledges agreed in Warsaw is too late and does not allow sufficient time for review,” they write. Countries have yet to establish a formal process to review these pledges, which compounds the problem, they add.

At the UN’s annual climate conference in Warsaw last November, a last minute decision was made to set a deadline of the first quarter of 2015 for these pledges to be submitted.

But LDCs, which include Bangladesh, Nepal, Uganda and the Gambia, are concerned that this does not leave enough time for these pledges to be examined and, if necessary, ramped up. They say that “preferably” these contributions should be submitted by the end of this year.

Prakash Mathema, chair of the LDC group, told RTCC: “Any delay in global climate action will lead to greater adverse effects, increased needs for adaptation as well as more serious residual and permanent loss and damage in LDCs and other vulnerable countries.”

But so far it looks unlikely that pledges will arrive much before the UN deadline, with the US prevented from moving any earlier by midterm elections in November this year. Of the developed nations, only the EU has given any significant indication of how its final submission might look.

A summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains the focus for any early pledges, with heads of state invited to attend the gathering armed with ambitious new commitments to tackle climate change.

Contributions

Parties have agreed that the Paris treaty, when it is signed off at the end of next year, is likely to consist of a series of “intended nationally determined contributions” put forward by each country on the basis of what they consider fair and equitable.

This is to be assessed on a number of factors, including historical responsibility for the problem of climate change and current capacity to deal with it.

But despite ongoing discussions, there is not yet a blueprint on what exactly these contributions should involve, and how the UN can ensure that country’s individual contributions will be ambitious enough.

As well as speeding up the process, LDCs have called for these contributions to be more precisely defined – a call that was echoed by both developed and developing countries during talks last week in Bonn.

Fierce divisions over the exact elements of these contributions prevented much progress from being made, with rich countries such as the US arguing that they should only have to put forward mitigation commitments, while other poorer countries argued that they should also encompass finance, adaptation and technology commitments.

The Paris treaty aims to keep the world below 2C of warming. Scientists have calculated that there is a finite amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted if this is to be achieved.

In their submission, LDCs push for an even more ambitious agreement that aims to keep warming below 1.5C. A combination of geographical and economic factors means that poor countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal will suffer the most due to the impacts of climate change.

“These processes must be resolved quickly,” they write. “We sacrifice the survival of our countries and our people through continued stalling and lack of decisive action. For the LDCs the question at hand is their direct survival as the most vulnerable countries.”

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Source: Flickr/mrlins

The UN has made addressing the potential destruction of many Pacific low lying islands in the Pacific priority for 2014.

The next 12 months have been named the International Year of Small Island States (SIDS), allowing UN agencies to help islands better manage their natural resources, protect the environment and create green jobs.

“For many Small Island Developing States future development is dependent on a very narrow resource base that is constantly challenged by the high-risk impacts of climate change and natural disasters,” said UNEP chief Achim Steiner.

Baron Waqa, the President of Nauru, acknowledged that his island risked losing “entire languages, cultures, histories, and all the progress that came at such a high cost for those who came before us.”

He added: “We celebrate this special year with the sombre knowledge that unless action is taken soon some islands won’t make it to the end of the century.”

Development agenda

Sustainable development is a particular challenge for the SIDS, where modern energy sources are limited and expensive. Energy generation is therefore the main source of economic instability as well as CO2 emissions, consuming more than 50 million barrels of petroleum every year.

A September summit in Samoa will seek to map the exact requirements of the states as the UN works on a set of Sustainable Development Goals that will act as the guiding principles of development post 2015.

As some of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, the Small Island States are also some of the most ambitious in pushing for strong action at the level of the UN, which hopes to sign of a global treaty on climate change in 2015.

At last year’s UN General Assembly, the Pacific Islands presented Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with the Majuro Declaration – a document signed by an alliance of states, confirming their determination to show leadership in tackling climate change.

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Michael Bloomberg tweeted a picture of himself and Ban at the UN today

By Sophie Yeo

Michael Bloomberg’s experience as New York mayor makes him the ideal candidate to “serve humanity” as he joins a growing squad to UN envoys working to secure a climate change treaty in 2015.

This is the view of UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who hailed Bloomberg’s “experience, his global visibility and global leadership” in New York on Friday.

Ban appointed Bloomberg as UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change in January – a decision which was welcomed by UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who called him “the best communicator of the need to act quickly.”

“Mayor Bloomberg is much better known for his strong stewardship on environment and climate change. He has made this great city of New York a carbon-free city,” Ban said.

“That is why I have asked him, after his retirement from Mayor, to serve humanity, to work for humanity, working as Special Envoy of the United Nations for cities and climate change…We need such dedicated and visionary leadership when we really try hard to address the climate change phenomenon.”

He added that Bloomberg’s work would be key in securing a “global, legal climate change agreement” in Paris in 2015.

Honored to join @UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to discuss Cities’ key role on #ClimateChange today.

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 21, 2014

As mayor of New York, Bloomberg undertook hundreds of initiatives to improve the sustainability of the city under a strategy called PlaNYC.

Published in 2007, this project created hundreds of acres of new parkland, reduced greenhouse gas emissions 13% on 2005 levels and transformed 30% of the cities yellow taxis into a “green” fleet of hybrid and clean diesel vehicles.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which tore through New York in 2012, Bloomberg created a US$19.5 billion rebuilding plan, which would incorporate the risks of climate change into the new design.

Bloomberg was also president of the C40 Cities Group, which brings together mayors from across the world to share ideas about tackling climate change at a local level.

Ban said that he would be counting on Bloomberg in the run up to UN meetings in Paris in 2015, where the world has agreed to sign off a climate change treaty, as well as the summit of world leaders that he will host in New York this September.

He said: “Now we would like to use his global leadership and power in, first of all, making our UN climate change summit meeting in September a great success, and most importantly, we need to have a global, legal climate change agreement by 2015, next year.”

By drawing attention to cities’ progress in fighting #ClimateChange we’ll show nations how much they can accomplish.

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 21, 2014

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(Pic: Defence Images/Flickr)

By Ed King

Local conflicts over water and land are being increasingly linked to civil war, genocide and sexual violence in North Africa, according to the UN.

A report released at the start of February warns that an ‘Invisible Frontline’ is emerging in the Sahel region, driven by land degradation and the effects of climate change.

Describing the problem as a “silent, invisible crisis that is destabilizing communities on a global scale”, it says farmers can either ‘fight or flee’ as previously fertile lands dry up and fail to feed livestock or yield crops.

“As the effects of climate change undermine livelihoods, inter-ethnic clashes are breaking out within and across states and fragile states are turning to militarization to control the situation,” the authors add.

They say that without proper international and local adaptation planning, the chances of enforced migration and war is likely to grow, highlighting the Sahel together with Senegal, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan as areas at high risk.

The study contains some alarming statistics. Around 1.5 billion people are said to depend on land classed as ‘degrading’ around the world. The UN estimates 12 million hectares of productive land become barren every year, equal to 20 million tonnes of grain.

By 2020 around 60 million people could move from the infertile areas of Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe.

And by 2025, up to 2.4 billion people globally may face periods of intense water scarcity, which could in turn see 700 million people migrate to new areas by 2030.

NATO concern

Hartmund Behrend, a German Army officer specialising in climate risk, told RTCC the fast degradation of soil in the Sahel region is a concern, particularly given the deteriorating security situation in that part of Africa.

Since 2010 conflicts have broken out in most countries in the region, including Chad, Nigeria, south Sudan, Algeria, Niger and Eritrea.

“I think it’s an important conflict amplifier,” Behrend said. “We see the Al Qaeda branch are more and more working in an area which is uncontrollable – we saw it in the refinery (attack) in Algeria last year.”

Behrend says NATO’s top ranks are now treating environmental degradation as a serious threat, recognising its potential as a “conflict amplifier.”

“Degradation should not be taken as an environmental issue but as foreign policies. This is what is heard more and more – a few weeks ago at the Munich Security Conference our Foreign Minister was only talking about climate policies,” he said.

It’s a view apparently shared across the military establishment. Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, who commanded the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, says the British and US military establishments are taking climate change and associated threats increasingly seriously.

“What do people do when they lose their land and their livelihood? Hopefully they can find alternatives which are legitimate, but it doesn’t always work like that,” he said.

“There are risks of people being involved in illicit activities like drugs, or ultimately becoming recruits for some form of terrorism.”

Morisetti points to the UK Military’s Global Strategic Trends – Out To 2040 publication as evidence of the deep concern within the security establishment.

It warns climate change could “amplify” existing political and resource stresses, pushing countries and regions to a “tipping point” where conflict ignites.

“We’ve seen in the last year conflict in the region – and contributing factors are the issues of resource stresses and scarcity – and if you look at where climate change will have its greatest effect, the Sahel is firmly in that world, that band that runs north and south around the equator,” he said.

“Therefore, this is likely to exacerbate the security challenge within and between states.”

Report: Desertification crisis affecting 168 countries worldwide

The UN says more effective land management and disaster relief could help alleviate some of the pressures felt by communities in the region.

The authors of the ‘Invisible Frontline’ report point to Niger, where it costs between US$ 25-65 to rehabilitate a hectare of degraded land.

They argue that if some relief aid provided to the country after the 2011 drought and famine, up to 7 million hectares of land could have been restored.

“If we secure productive land, we will strengthen the livelihoods of households, promote agriculture for national growth and economic development, protect the social fabric from collapse and bolster political systems in fledgling democracies,” they write.

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Source: World Economic Forum

By Sophie Yeo

Ban Ki-moon’s global warming summit in September “has to be a success”, according to the UK’s top climate diplomat, who warns it is critical leaders of the world’s top carbon polluters attend.

So far no world leader has committed to the meeting, despite it taking place on the sidelines of the 2014 General Assembly, when heads of state are typically in New York.

“The simple thing is that no one wants to go as a head of state unless they have a clear announcement they want to make,” Sir David King told RTCC, adding that each leader is currently waiting for others to confirm their attendance before announcing their own decision.

The Secretary General announced the meeting in September 2013, calling upon heads of governments and businesses to bring ambitious emissions reduction pledges. The timing is critical, as the UN is currently working on plans for a global emissions reduction deal in 2015, set to be signed in Paris, which requires all leading economies to make significant carbon pollution cuts.

An official at the Secretary General’s office told RTCC they expected leaders to be at the summit, but could not confirm any names. “No Head of State or dignitary has confirmed attendance to the Climate Change Summit that will take place in September,” they said.

The office of UK Prime Minister David Cameron refused to say if he would be there due to “security reasons”.

Momentum change

Since his September appointment, King has been travelling around the world to try to extract promises from leaders that they will be at the summit. To date, he says he has received indications rather than promises. “We can set up quite a long list of heads of states that are likely to be there,” he said.

“If I was a guessing person, I’d say Peru, Mexico, United States, Britain, Germany and France … So I don’t want to sound pessimistic. I think with that little grouping you’ve already seen the dominoes fall. I think it’s going to happen. But I’m not going to rest until it has.” Without China, Brazil, India and Japan, the summit risks being a “non event”, he added.

On Tuesday, the minister of state of the United Arab Emirates, Sultan Al Jaber, announced that he would host a meeting in Abu Dhabi in May to ratchet up ambition before the summit.

At a meeting in Warsaw in November, the UN said that countries “who are ready” must submit their pledges during the first quarter of 2015—nine months before the final treaty is scheduled to be signed off in Paris.

This leaves little time for the promises to be reviewed and potentially ratcheted up. Ban’s summit in September therefore provides a “sounding board” for leaders to push one another for tougher emissions reduction targets before the official deadline in March the following year, said King.

“I see it as a key part of the process precisely because the UNFCCC failed to agree on an earlier date for announcing nationally determined contributions,” he said. “This meeting has to be successful.”

The UN has no process in place for ensuring the nationally determined contributions will be enough to limit global warming to safe levels, he added —”a missing piece in the architecture”—and it has not allocated enough time to work through any shortfalls.

“There is a real need to see that a significant number of heads of states come to the meeting, and so that in the first instance has to be the most important issue: getting enough people there.”

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(Pic: Flickr/magerleagues)

By John McGarrity

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said progress made by cities in cutting greenhouse gas emissions should encourage national governments to make an increased effort at UN climate talks to agree a new carbon reduction treaty.

Bloomberg, who last week was appointed the UN’s envoy for climate and cities, told reporters that he would encourage support for UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon’s climate summit by showing that emissions cuts can be achievable at relatively low cost.

“I think he (Ban) is probably a little bit frustrated that the nations of the world haven’t come together in Rio+20 (environment summit) and all the others things like that have to be taken to the next step. What he is trying to do is get as much help as he can so at the national level they take the bull by the horns, and really make progress.”

Bloomberg added: “If I can carry the flag for him, and get him a little bit of information and be a spokesman for him, I would really love to do that.”

“There’s nothing inconsistent between what we do at the city level and what he would like to get done at a national level,”  the former New York mayor said.

He was speaking as mayors from 63 cities gathered for a summit in Johannesburg of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which share ideas on emissions-cutting policies such as energy efficient buildings, cycle lanes, greener waste management and expanded mass transit systems.

A report released by C40 today said cities in its network had between them implemented 8,000 measures that could reduce emissions of climate changing gases.

“We can’t do it all but with the UNFCCC (the UN’s climate arm) we can attack the problem at both ends,” Bloomberg told a press conference.

With @UN‘s new #climate envoy @MikeBloomberg at #JoburgC40 @c40cities pic.twitter.com/UXIHLBtngO

— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) February 5, 2014

Urban areas account for 70% of global carbon emissions and by mid-century three-quarters of the world’s population is expected to live in an urban area.

At the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 the network pledged to reduce their total carbon footprint by 250 million tonnes by 2020 and 1 billion tonnes by 2020.

The world emitted around 35 billion tonnes of CO2 from energy sources and industry in 2012, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and without drastic emissions cuts will soon run out of the available carbon it can emit to have even a 50% chance of avoiding runaway climate change.

UN climate talks over the last few year have advanced the notion that countries could propose a wide range of methods to cut emissions to meet targets as part of a ‘pledge and review’ and bottom-up approach that wouldn’t be necessarily legally-binding.

However poor countries say richer nations are doing far too little in cutting climate-changing gases, risking mass droughts, floods and more frequent and destructive storms in future decades.

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