At a hydrogen summit this week, finance minister Bruno Le Maire unveiled his vision for clean hydrogen and emphasised that he hopes to partner with Germany on this.

“I hope that we will manage to find a joint Franco-German and then a European project for hydrogen,” Le Maire told French media outlet CNews ahead of the meeting in Berlin.

This week Le Maire revealed that almost a third of France’s €100 billion ($119bn) coronavirus recovery package will be spent on green energy policies, with €7 billion going towards the development of carbon-free hydrogen for transport and the industrial sector by 2030. 

Germany unveiled its national hydrogen strategy in June. The country has earmarked €9 billion for the expansion of hydrogen production as part of a €130 billion economic stimulus package, with the aim of ramping up its capacity to 5 GW by 2030 and 10 GW by 2040.

Carbon-free hydrogen is produced by electrolysis. Electricity from renewable sources or nuclear is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition to net zero emissions, particularly as a solution to decarbonise the steel and shipping industries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Thursday. 

Ministers promise green recovery at Japanese virtual summit, keep quiet on fossil bailouts

France aims to install 6.5 GW of clean hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and start building electrolyser factories in 2021, the government said.

The government has said its investment in carbon-free hydrogen will cut France’s CO2 output by 6 million tonnes, the equivalent of Paris’ annual emissions.

“France is convinced that carbon-free hydrogen will be one of the great revolutions of our century: for the decarbonisation of the industrial sector, to develop and deploy emission-free mobility solutions, to store energy and provide additional responses to the intermittency of renewable energies,” Le Maire said in France’s hydrogen strategy.

Nicola De Blasio, a senior fellow in energy technology innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Climate Home News it would take more than two countries to build a functioning European hydrogen market.

“You need to create a demand, you need to build the infrastructure… this will require coordination at the EU level,” De Blasio said. 

Fracking company sues Slovenia over ‘unreasonable’ environmental protections

A global race to ramp up production of the clean fuel has begun with the EU Commission unveiling its hydrogen strategy in July, which aims to increase capacity to 40 GW and generate 10 million tonnes of clean hydrogen by 2030.

The EU estimates that by 2050 clean hydrogen could meet 24% of the world’s energy demand. But it is a long road ahead. Today 96% of hydrogen supply comes from fossil fuels, according to a report by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Hydrogen from fossil fuels generates more than 800 Mt of CO2, comparable to the emissions of the UK and Indonesia combined, according to the IEA. 

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who presides over the European Green New Deal, has championed hydrogen as a renewable fuel that can easily be integrated into existing energy infrastructure, as opposed to wind and solar which require the construction of new farms and grids. 

“There are millions of kilometres of natural gas pipeline, and a significant fraction is completely compatible with hydrogen use,” José Miguel Bermúdez Menéndez, an energy technology analyst at the IEA, told Climate Home News. 

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While Germany plans to generate hydrogen from renewable sources, such as offshore wind and hydropower, France is a major proponent of nuclear power, which makes up over 70% of the country’s energy mix. In an interview with French media BFM TV, Le Maire described himself as a “nuclear advocate.” When asked whether France would generate clean hydrogen using nuclear, Le Maire said the fuel remains relevant.

Germany plans to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022, following mass public support for their closure amid safety concerns. 

This should not hinder EU-wide collaboration on hydrogen, said De Blasio, citing Italy as an example. Italy closed its nuclear plants decades ago but continues to import electricity from nuclear. “How many consumers know where their electricity comes from?” De Blasio said.

The EU could meet most of its hydrogen demand internally, but the bloc must move fast to compete internationally, De Blasio added, noting that China has started to look into hydrogen. 

During his interview with CNews, De Maire warned that the EU should not make the “same mistakes” as it did with solar panels by allowing China to dominate the manufacturing side. 

“If China is going to put its industrial might behind hydrogen, like it did with electric vehicles and solar panels, we could have a similar situation,” De Blasio said.

The post France seeks German collaboration on hydrogen in EU green recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.

In its first report since the coronavirus outbreak, the IEA – an influential voice among businesses, investors and governments – reviewed global energy consumption and CO2 emissions trends for the rest of the year.

“Renewable energy has so far been the energy source most resilient to Covid-19 lockdown measures,” the IEA found, noting demand for renewable electricity has been largely unaffected by the overall fall in energy use.

This, it said, came despite the fact the pace of additional renewable power could decline this year as supply chain disruptions and social distancing measures are significantly delaying construction and installation.

Climate Home News previously reported that installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roofs of businesses and homes, which is expected to help drive future growth, were hard hit by the economic slowdown.

This could impact previous IEA forecasts that that 2020 will be a record year for additions of electricity generation capacity for solar, wind and other clean energies.

IMF chief: $1 trillion post-coronavirus stimulus must tackle climate crisis

The lifting of social distancing measures in different part of the world and the scope and timing of stimulus packages will influence the amount of additional renewable capacity this year.

But the IEA said this should have a limited impact on total renewable electricity generation this year.

As lockdown measures were implemented in North America and Europe to contain the spread of Covid-19, global energy demand dropped by 3.8% in the first quarter of the year compared with the first quarter of 2019.

Bucking the trend, renewable energy demand increased by 1.5%, which the IEA said was largely driven by the additional wind and solar projects that came online over the past year and the priority given to renewables in most power sectors.

For example, India is likely to have a power surplus in 2020 for the first time following the decline in energy consumption, according to a report by S&P Global Ratings.

The credit rating agency estimates the economic slowdown will only have a limited impact on the Indian renewable sector, which benefits from a “must-run” status compelling power distribution companies to use solar or wind energy whenever it is generated.

The continued growth in renewable energy put further pressure on global coal demand, which fell by almost 8%. The IEA reckoned cheap gas, mild weather and a temporary shutdown of industry in China also contributed to the plunge.

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Travel restrictions and the collapse of air travel led to a near 5% fall in oil demand, while gas demand was down 2% compared with the first quarter of 2019.

“Only renewables are holding up during the previously unheard-of slump in electricity use,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director. “It is still too early to determine the longer-term impacts, but the energy industry that emerges from this crisis will be significantly different from the one that came before.”

The IEA projected global energy demand for the rest of the year using a scenario where a global recession caused by months of restrictions measures is followed by a gradual recovery, which includes permanent losses in economic activity.

In these conditions, the IEA estimates global energy demand could contract by 6% this year – the largest ever drop in absolute terms and more than seven times larger than the impact of the 2008 financial crisis.

This could see global energy-related CO2 emissions fall by almost 8% in 2020 compared with 2019 levels, reaching their lowest level since 2010 – the largest decrease in emissions ever recorded.

Earlier in April, analysts at Carbon Brief estimated CO2 emissions could drop by 5.5% compared with 2019.

“As after previous crises, however, the rebound in emissions may be larger than the decline, unless the wave of investment to restart the economy is dedicated to cleaner and more resilient energy infrastructure,” the agency warned.

UN development chief calls for green shift away from ‘irrational’ oil dependence

Under its scenario, the IEA anticipates low carbon sources to “far outstrip” coal-fired generation globally.

It anticipated global oil demand could drop by 9% in 2020, returning to 2012 consumption levels, coal demand could drop by 8% because of an decline in electricity consumption. However, coal demand recovery in China could offset some larger declines elsewhere, such as in India.

Gas is also forecast to “fall much further across the full year than in the first quarter”.

Global consumption of renewable energy is expected to rise by 1% in 2020 and renewable electricity generation could rise by nearly 5% in 2020, according to the IEA – a growth rate that remains smaller than anticipated before the pandemic.

The IEA has previously come under criticism for underplaying the speed of renewable energy deployment.

The post Renewables most resilient to Covid-19 lockdown measures, says IEA appeared first on Climate Home News.

Addressing ministers from 30 countries by video link during the second day of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, which took place online, Merkel urged governments not to neglect international climate finance. They should not “try to reduce it in order to save money, but on the contrary to enhance it,” she said.

The Petersberg Climate Dialogue – a mainstay of the climate diplomacy calendar – was focused on the design of ‘green recovery packages’ following the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown.

As governments in the world’s richest countries mull over multi-billion dollar stimulus plans and bailouts to hard-hit industries, developing countries are facing the twin crises with fewer resources.

In a statement to Climate Home News, a spokeswoman for the African Group expressed concerns the Covid-19 pandemic might divert rich countries’ attention away from climate finance as they will “inevitably have other national priorities related to economic recovery”.

German environment minister defends airline bailout, promises green recovery

In 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020 to help vulnerable countries cope with climate impacts and reduce emissions – a goal that rich countries have not yet met.

The African Group said it would be calling on developed countries “to agree on a way forward to close the climate finance gap by the end of this year”.

Discussions on establishing a new collective climate finance goal is also due to start at the next round of UN climate talks, known as Cop26, initially scheduled for November and now postponed to an unspecified date in 2021.

Merkel admitted the dual needs for Covid-19 recovery funds and climate finance would lead to “a very difficult debate” over how governments distribute their money. She urged ministers not to focus solely on their national situation, “but to fulfill our international commitments so that we have a global success in climate protection”.

International cooperation, she said, is “crucial” in responding to global challenges as she called on every country to ensure “we can turn our backs on fossil fuels”.

Merkel said Germany had earmarked €4 billion for “international climate financing” this year – double the amount from 2014.

“And even after 2020, Germany will continue to contribute to international climate finance in accordance with the Paris Agreement,” she added, without providing further details.

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In a pre-recorded video address, Rwanda’s environment minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya said the Covid-19 crisis had “further exposed the unacceptable levels of inequality in our societies and we must work even harder to level the playing field”.

The recovery, she said, “must start by investing in people, especially the most vulnerable”.

International cooperation to tackle both the global public health crisis and the climate crisis was a recurring theme throughout the two-day dialogue.

“The only answer is brave, visionary and collaborative leadership,” said UN secretary general António Guterres, adding that many parts of the world “lacked the necessary political will”.

He singled out the world’s largest emitters, including the US and China, saying they too had to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Without the contribution of the big emitters, all our efforts will be doomed,” he warned.

France calls for minimum carbon price to counter oil crash

Among some of the concrete propositions to enhance cooperation between countries, Japan’s environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi offered to establish an online platform for willing countries to share experiences on the Covid-19 recovery and climate action.

“This would take place ahead of Cop26, maybe later this summer,” Koizumi said, adding Japan could provide technical support and would work closely with UN Climate Change and the UK, which is hosting Cop26. Guterres said he was “fully supportive” of the idea.

In a separate message to the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, Koizumi said Japan would raise its 2030 ambition despite sticking to its existing carbon-cutting target in a submission to the UN last month.

“Let me make it clear. It is not our intention to leave the national target as it is,” he said, adding Japan’s climate plan will reflect tougher emission reduction effort following a national review. Additional information to the 2030 climate plan would be submitted to the UN before Cop26 in Glasgow next year.

The post Merkel: don’t neglect climate finance to the world’s poor appeared first on Climate Home News.

Lufthansa is in talks with the German government over a package reportedly worth €10 billion. The company warned it had cash to survive just weeks as flights were grounded to halt the spread of Covid-19.

Campaigners have repeatedly called for any state aid to carbon-intensive sectors like aviation to be conditional on measurable climate action, but environment minister Svenja Schulze said now was not the time to impose green conditions.

“I do not want to question the bailout money we are dispersing round. We have been internationally commended on our policy on quick help and this is right,” said environment minister Svenja Schulze at the opening press conference of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a mainstay of the climate diplomacy calendar, which Germany is co-hosting with the UK this week.

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The two-day event is taking place by video conferencing as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.

Ministers from 30 countries are participating in the online talks, with a focus on how to design an economic recovery to the Covid-19 crisis with job creation and climate protection at its core.

Schulze argued the economic response to the pandemic required different approaches in the very short term and in the months following the ongoing public health crisis.

“We are still in the very midst of the crisis. So what we have are short term funds to help businesses survive this crisis. This is a protective shield for workers and employees,” she told reporters on Monday.

Responding to questions about how the Lufthansa bailout aligned with the green recovery, Schulze said now was the time for “quick, targeted help”.

“But there will be a time after the crisis,” she added, describing the second phase of the economic response as a recovery plan that follows “a compass of climate action and social progress” aligned with the Paris Agreement and climate neutrality objectives.

France calls for minimum carbon price to counter oil crash

“Rescue is rescue,” agreed Nick Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and an advisor to the UK presidency of Cop26 climate talks.

Joining the press conference by video link from the UK, Stern said: “The first weeks and months are for protecting employment and preventing the economy from imploding. That should be the priority.”

Stern warned against discriminating against specific industries, such as airlines, in the rescue phase of the Covid-19 response. “But rescue moves to recovery,” he said: a second phase to start in summer or autumn this year.

“At that point, we must lift our eyes and look forward and ask ourselves where are the activities of the future, where are the jobs of the future.”

Energy efficiency, electrifying transport, pedestrianising cities, protecting land and forests and investing in health and education could form the key pillars of a recovery investment plan, Stern suggested.

“Of course energy companies and airlines are going to have to change and you don’t try to wipe them out in the weeks of rescue, what you do is you protect employment and then you move to the encouragement of the change,” he added.

Coronavirus: plane-free skies spur research into warming impact of aviation

Bailouts to the aviation industry have dominated countries’ immediate response to the pandemic. The sector has been brought to its knees from a near-shutdown of air travel.

European airlines have sought €12.8 billion in government bailouts since the start of the pandemic, according to a tracker created by campaign groups Transport & Environment, Greenpeace and Carbon Market Watch.

Air France-KLM is expected to receive a €10 billion relief package in loans and guarantees from the French and Dutch governments.

France’s finance minister Bruno le Maire unveiled €7 billion in support for the carrier on Friday, including €4 billion of state-backed loans and €3 billion of direct loans.

Le Maire warned the relief package was “not a blank cheque” but that support was dependent on environmental conditions, including a CO2-cutting plan and for Air France to become “the most sustainable airline on the planet”.  Details on what this means are yet to be finalised and the European Commission still needs to approve the plan.

Back online, ministers taking part in the Petersberg Climate Dialogue are due to discuss how to maintain momentum for climate action this year. A key UN climate summit, Cop26, initially due to be held in Glasgow, UK, in November has been postponed to an unspecified date in 2021.

Schulze, said the international community should “stick to the schedule set by the Paris climate agreement” and that countries needed to “present updated climate protection goals this year”.

Interview: UN development chief calls for green shift away from ‘irrational’ oil dependence

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are due to communicate or update their 2030 climate plans and publish a long-term decarbonisation strategy before 31 December, regardless of the timing of Cop26.

So far, only a handful of countries including the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Chile, have submitted tougher mid-term plans to the UN. But the timetable for raising ambition is looking increasingly likely to slip.

New Zealand reaffirmed its existing 2030 target last week, while waiting for independent advice on how to align its climate plan to the 1.5C goal expected in early 2021. The pandemic has also hampered developing countries’ ability to design new plans before the end of the year.

Schulze insisted the EU needed to “send a clear signal” for climate ambition by submitting its updated 2030 climate plan to reduce emissions by 50-55% from 1990 levels. She added the union needed to do “everything possible” to encourage other major emitters to step up.

Countries represented at the dialogue include China, India, Japan, Chile, European member states, small island states such as the Marshall Islands and other developing nations such as Ethiopia and Bhutan.

The post German environment minister defends airline bailout, promises green recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.

With people staying at home to slow the spread of the disease, global oil demand has slumped by a third, hitting producers hard.

Climate campaigners are calling on governments to make relief for the fossil fuel industry dependent on tougher climate action. In the rush to protect businesses and workers from the impacts of the public health crisis, though, some polluters are being bailed out with no strings attached.

In a historic deal, a group of major oil-producing countries, Opec, and allies including Russia, on 12 April agreed the biggest ever cut to oil supply to stabilise energy markets and end a price war between Moscow and Saudi Arabia. Yet prices continued to slide.

A report by Influence Map, which analyses corporate lobbying on climate policy, found the oil and gas sector to be the most active globally in lobbying governments for financial support and deregulation in response to Covid-19. 

This, it found, was particularly the case in the US, Canada and Australia.

Which governments gave them what they wanted? Here is a round-up of the various types of support to polluting sectors introduced by the world’s largest economies.

US 

Donald Trump has been determined to support the energy sector ravaged by oil prices and falling demand, putting pressure on Opec members to agree to cut production. 

At home, the Trump administration instructed the Strategic Petroleum Reserves to be filled to the maximum of its 30 million barrels capacity to “alleviate financial hardship” on the energy sector.  The Department of Energy said it intended to make an additional 47 million barrels of storage capacity available. 

The Covid-19 bill clocked up a gigantic $2 trillion to help workers and industries impacted by the pandemic. 

It includes $61bn in relief for airlines, including $50bn  for passenger airlines, split evenly between loans and grants to pay employees, and $8bn for air cargo carriers.

The bill includes $17bn for companies deemed critical in maintaining US national security – largely set aside for one company, Boeing, which was already under pressure over two deadly crashes before the pandemic.

Solar and wind power businesses did not get the access to tax credits they had sought under the package. Right-wing US organisations lobbied against proposed tax incentives for green programmes. “Climate change is not an immediate threat to humanity,” they wrote. 

Oil and gas companies do not directly qualify for economic support under the bill.

Elsewhere, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the pandemic. This follows lobbying from the American Petroleum Institute. 

Oil and gas lease sales are going ahead as usual while three states – Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia, have passed legislation increasing criminal penalties on protests disrupting or damaging fossil fuel infrastructure.

China 

Provinces across China have taken measures to keep people in work and prop up small businesses but nationwide relief measures have been on a much smaller scale than in other major economies. 

As the number of new reported cases in China came closer to zero, five new coal-fired power plants totalling 7,960 MW were approved for construction between 1 and 18 March – more than than the total for 2019 which saw the approval of 6,310MW, according to Global Energy Monitor. 

Coal consumption has bounced back in China in recent years and the amount of coal power capacity under development increased even before the Covid-19 outbreak. 

At the end of February, provinces gave the green light to 34GW of new coal power, despite existing overcapacity. It is not yet clear if all the new approved plants will be built.

While early indications suggest Chinese officials could be turning towards heavy-industries to reboot the economy, Beijing is also considering “new infrastructure” investments such as 5G, high-speed railways and electric vehicle charging points as part of the recovery efforts. 

Environmental supervision of firms could be simplified and in some circumstances temporarily suspended to help companies resume production, according to an official from the ministry of environment. 

Russia

Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin announced a $4 billion fund to support the economy and key industries. 

The package includes tax breaks for hardest-hit sectors including air transport and tourism and the expansion of subsidised loans to businesses.

Oil and gas state-controlled companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, could be allowed to delay paying dividends, Radio Free Europe reported. 

The collapse of the price of oil, Russia’s main export, has left the economy particularly vulnerable. The government is aiming to subsidise the shortfall in oil revenue. Mishustin said the central bank would compensate the currency market if the price of Urals oil dropped below $25 per barrel. 

The mechanism has previously been used to compensate oil companies for the shortfall in export revenue when oil was sold domestically below global prices. “It should now also compensate for the decrease in federal budget revenue,” Mishustin said. 

Despite the contraction in oil demand and continued cheap supply, Mishustin insisted the Russian oil industry was prepared for volatility. 

Canada 

The province of Alberta, home to extensive tar sands extraction, has been leading Canada’s bailout of the oil and gas sector. 

The provincial government handed out tax relief measures for its struggling industry, suspending fees collected by the industry regulator to the tune of $79 million.

A ministerial order also suspended a number of environmental reporting requirements until mid August. 

Meanwhile, the Business Council of Alberta and oil and gas companies have demanded the federal government postpone a planned increase of the carbon tax and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobbied for a suspension of nationwide environmental rules.

However the Trudeau administration chose relief measures with an environmental slant.

On 17 April, Justin Trudeau announced $1.2bn to clean up orphan and inactive oil and gas wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia to maintain jobs. 

The federal government is creating a $750 million emissions reduction fund to support oil and gas sector investments in reducing emissions, particularly methane. 

Environmental campaigners have warned oil and gas could get stealth subsidies through relaxed rules to Canada’s export credit agency, the Export Development Canada (EDC). 

As part of its response to the pandemic, the Canadian government significantly extended the scope of EDC’s work. 

Under the new rules, EDC will be able to support transactions domestically as well as abroad. The agency’s liability limit, previously capped at $32 billion, has also been lifted. 

EDC has a record of supporting Canada’s oil and gas sector export abroad. It provided an average $10.6 billion a year to oil and gas projects from 2016 to 2018, according to Oil Change International.

The Canada Account, which supports export transactions deemed of national interest including the Trans-Mountain pipeline, is also benefiting from the liability cap lift.

The government also waived ground lease rents for 21 airports authorities until the end of the year as part of a support package for air travel.

Australia 

The federal government is pushing for the expansion of coal mines to keep people in work during the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown. 

Resources Minister Keith Pitt said the expansion of Acland thermal coal mine, in Queensland, was “even more” more important now the coronavirus pandemic is hammering the economy. 

The Queensland government has so far refused to approve the expansion despite pressure from mine operator New Hope, which is expected to exhaust coal reserves by September. 

In South Australia, the government suspended exploration and licence fees for the mining, oil and gas sectors. The relief will extend the licence fee deadline to 31 December. 

Energy and mining minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan announced a 12-month waiver of committed expenditure for all mineral exploration licence holders. 

UK

The UK government is resisting calls from the aviation sector for a bespoke bailout package. 

Airlines trade association Iata has led a global lobbying campaign demanding governments immediately reduce all charges and taxes and provide airlines with specific support funds. 

Iata has also been pushing regulators to relax rules so airlines can issue travel vouchers instead of refunds, allowing for a surge of passengers when travel restrictions are lifted. 

In a letter to airlines and airport executives, UK chancellor Rishi Sunak said bespoke government support would only be available as “a last resort” and after companies had exhausted other funding options, such as raising money from shareholders. 

But on 6 April, British low-cost airline group EasyJet received a $737 million loan from the UK government after warning it was running out of cash – although it managed to pay £60 million in dividends to its largest shareholder.

Despite strong commitments to climate action, the Bank of England has allowed the debt of BP, Shell and Total’s subsidiary companies to be eligible for support under the banks’ boosted corporate bond purchase scheme.

European Union 

EU member states have agreed that the union’s response to the pandemic must be aligned with the green transition and its European Green Deal.

Writing in Climate Home News, 17 environment ministers called for the Green Deal and its carbon neutrality goal to provide the pathway for economic recovery. But across the union, carbon-intensive sectors are still benefiting from relief. 

The European Central Bank rolled-out a €870 billion ($781bn) emergency bond-buying programme to stabilise the euro zone economy until the end of the year – the equivalent of 7.3% of the euro area’s GDP.

Initial analysis of the bonds purchased in the last three weeks by Influence Map shows the programme included bonds issued by oil majors including Shell, Eni and Total – with some of the bonds purchased maturing between 2024 and 2034. 

The EU Commission has also started to approve airline bailouts aimed at easing companies’ liquidity crunch. 

Loan guarantees have been made available in Sweden. Belgium deferred concession fee payments for its major airports. The French and Dutch governments are in talks with Air-France KLM for state support. Germany is also in talks with Lufthansa to provide state aid with loans and equity investments. 

In Austria, the government is also in talks with Lufthansa, the parent company of Austrian Airlines, to provide state aid for the airline only if the money supports emissions cuts.

Meanwhile in France, the National Assembly has approved a $21.4bn package to rescue its strategic industries, largely focused on aviation and automobile majors such as Airbus, AirFrance and Renault.

The text requires recipient companies to include social and environmental objectives in their business models in line with the Paris Agreement, but gives no further conditions.

Environmental NGOs have accused the government of writing “a blank cheque” to some of the country’ largest polluters.

The powerful European automotive lobby group, ACEA, has called on EU institutions to provide liquidity support for companies, suppliers and dealers.

The automotive sector is also lobbying for the union to drop a tightening of CO2 regulations aimed at raising fuel efficiency. “This not the time to think about further tightening of the CO2 regulation,” VDA president Hildegard Müller told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

India 

India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan struck a deal with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) to deliver more cooking gas supplies as part of a scheme to support women living below the poverty line. 

Pradhan said he had given Adnoc its assurances India would buy crude oil from the company to replenish the country’s strategic petroleum reserves.

Brazil 

The Brazilian government has opened negotiations on an emergency loan package for energy distributors, according to Reuters. 

The government has also postponed all electricity auctions in 2020, including for renewable and green power. Experts say this could benefit the country’s natural gas plants, which will become more competitive in the next auction rounds.

Argentina 

The Argentinian government has pledged an additional $100 billion for public work investments for road works, construction and large infrastructure projects. 

Argentinian newspaper Perfil reported the government had entered negotiations with oil-producing provinces and companies to reinstate a support price per barrel to halt a production collapse. 

South Korea 

Despite plans for a Green New Deal and an objective to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the government is opening an $825 million emergency credit line to the country’s biggest coal plant manufacturer, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co.

Environmental groups are seeking an injunction against the bailout, seeking to make the relief contingent on the company’s transition away from coal.

The post Coronavirus: which governments are bailing out big polluters? appeared first on Climate Home News.

In France and the UK, citizens’ assemblies set up to make climate policy recommendations have moved online to continue their work amid restrictions to contain the spread of the virus.

Both countries are among the worst affected by the pandemic. More than 15,700 people have died in France and 12,100 in the UK as of Thursday, according to the World Health Organisation.

France’s citizens’ assembly was launched following “yellow vest” protests that were sparked by a 2018 hike in fuel tax. It was tasked to come up with measures to reduce the country’s emissions at least 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels “in a spirit of social justice”.

Its 150 members, drawn from a cross-section of society, met in person over five weekends starting in October 2019. Then Covid-19 hit and the authorities ordered people to stay home and avoid non-essential journeys.

Undeterred, the citizens assembly took its penultimate session online over two days at the start of April. The agenda was adapted to discuss the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and how recovery measures could support climate action.

C’est parti pour une première journée de travail en ligne avec les 150 membres de la #ConventionCitoyenne pour le #climat

Heureux de les retrouver dans cet hémicycle virtuel

De retour dès que possible au @lecese pour la session #7, session finale de la Convention pic.twitter.com/UMs4TLDQyI

— Ivassenko Thomas (@ThomasIvassenko) April 3, 2020

Following its online session, the assembly decided to send 50 of the 150 propositions it is working on to the French government, in the hope of influencing the Covid-19 recovery plan.

The propositions, obtained by Climate Home News, were not made public as they still need to be voted on at one last session.

Some of the French assembly’s draft proposals

• An investment plan for public transport: encouraging ride-sharing and cycling, modernising railway infrastructure, reducing VAT on train tickets, banning the sales of new private vehicles emitting more than 110 gCO2/km from 2025 and more than 90 gCO2/km from 2030, and creating more incentives for electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles
• An investment plan for agriculture: promoting local food networks, ensuring 50% of agricultural land is developed according to agro-ecology practices by 2040
• Reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing and production by encouraging local distribution networks, reducing pollution and incentivising sustainable approaches
• Scaling up the recycling sector by 2023 and promoting the repair of products
• Improving the energy efficiency of 20 million homes and making energy efficiency renovation on buildings compulsory by 2040
• Promoting renewable energy production of small units to ensure all citizens, businesses and local authorities can contribute to green electricity production from 2023
• Containing urban sprawl
• Banning advertising for the most polluting products based on a CO2 rating score and encouraging public messaging against excessive consumption
• Ensuring public support for innovation is aligned with goals to reduce emissions and boost clean technologies by 2025
• Reforming the EU’s commercial politics to promote local distribution networks and avoid over-consumption

The assembly warned the French government not to repeat the mistakes made after the 2008 financial crisis, which saw investments in carbon-intensive and fossil fuel industries.

Instead, it urged the government to ensure investments made as part of the recovery effort are “socially acceptable” and benefit green solutions and the energy transition.

It called for recovery measures to prepare for “a different social and economic model, that is more human and more resilient in the face of future crisis” by reducing France’s dependence on imports, boosting jobs and reducing emissions.

Laurence Tubiana, co-president of the assembly’s governance committee and a key architect of the Paris Agreement, praised the assembly members for their patience in taking their work online.

“Sometimes the organisation of our citizens’ assembly for the climate is like crossing the Amazon without a map,” she said.

South Korea to implement Green New Deal after ruling party election win

The UK’s assembly is also moving online to continue its work to draw up measures for the UK to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

The last of four weekends due to be held at the end of March was cancelled following the coronavirus outbreak. Instead the 110-member assembly will split its final work across three weekends of virtual Zoom meetings, starting 18/19 April and finishing 16/17 May.

Sarah Allan, of Involve, a public participation charity commissioned by the UK Parliament to facilitate the assembly, said members were keen to finalise their work despite Covid-19 restrictions.

Test calls were held with all participants to ensure everyone was able to navigate the online meeting software. Two people had to take a break after being affected by coronavirus. One other member has been suffering from medical issues not related to Covid-19.

“But nobody has dropped out or doesn’t want to take part anymore,” Allan said.

The UK assembly’s final sessions will focus on electricity generation, negative emissions technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere and finalising its recommendations. Speakers and experts have pre-recorded presentations to be discussed in smaller break-out groups.

Assembly members will also be given the opportunity to discuss the impact of the pandemic. Allan said the assembly’s experts were still discussing how best to approach the issue.

“We are talking almost weekly with the French assembly,” she said.

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According to a survey by pollsters Opinium, 48% of the British public agrees the government should respond “with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19” – 28% of respondents said it shouldn’t.

The model for holding citizens’ assemblies, even at times of crisis, has gathered international interest.

“I have emails in my inbox from Canada and Australia wanting to talk about how we are holding the assembly online,” said Allan.

But the pandemic has also stopped some assemblies in their tracks.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s vice prime minister and minister for the ecological transition, told Climate Home News the launch of the country’s citizens’ assembly on climate change had had to be postponed.

“We realised that it didn’t make much sense to start working on this in a moment when we have stated the importance of social distancing,” she said. “But all the preparatory work was done so we will be in a position to launch it as soon as the general circumstances allow us to do so.”

The post Citizens’ assemblies on climate change seek to shape the post-Covid recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.

President Moon Jae-in’s party won a landslide 180 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, up from 120 previously, in a huge show of faith in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The election was one of the first nationwide polls to take place since the start of the pandemic, but the threat of Covid-19 did not deter voters from casting their ballot, with a record turnout.

Voters had to wear a mask and gloves and use hand sanitiser, with those failing a temperature check directed to special booths.

The Democratic Party’s decisive victory will enable President Moon to press ahead with its newly adopted Green New Deal agenda during the last two years of his mandate.

Under the plan, South Korea has become the first country in East Asia to pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to submit updated climate plans to 2030 and long-term decarbonisation strategies to the UN before the end of the year.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

In its climate manifesto published last month, the Democratic Party promised to pass a “Green New Deal” law that would steer the country’s transformation into a low-carbon economy.

The manifesto explicitly referred to the “Green New Deal” plans of Democratic candidates in the US and the EU’s “Green Deal for Europe”, under which the European Commission promised to make the EU the first carbon-neutral continent.

The plan includes large-scale investments in renewable energy, the introduction of a carbon tax, the phase out of domestic and overseas coal financing by public institutions, and the creation of a Regional Energy Transition Centre to support workers transition to green jobs.

The Democratic Party also pledged to develop a medium to long-term roadmap to achieve its goal and campaigners are pressing President Moon to come up with a clear timeline and policies to meet it.

Jessica Yun, of the South Korean advocate group Solutions For Our Climate (SFOC), told Climate Home News she now expected climate change and energy issues to become more prominent within the national political debate.

“It is a positive sign that the ruling Democratic Party has successfully brought in environmental leaders from the coal phase-out and energy transition movement,” she said.

“This is a clear mandate and opportunity for the party to implement these policies,” said Ursula Fuentes Hutfilter, a senior climate policy advisor specialised in the Asia-Pacific region at research group Climate Analytics.

She added that for the Democratic Party to turn its promises into something credible it needed to take “concrete steps”, including updating its 2030 emissions target and developing a clear roadmap to phase out coal power.

Renewable energies under threat in 2020 from coronavirus, oil price slump

Under its existing climate plan, South Korea pledged to cut emissions 37% below projected business-as-usual levels by 2030. An increase of the target was not mentioned in the Democratic Party’s climate platform.

Climate Action Tracker ranked that target as “highly insufficient” to meet the goal of the Paris deal to limit global warming to “well below 2C”.

South Korea is the world’s seventh largest carbon emitter. Coal represents about 40% of the country’s energy mix and Seoul has not yet agreed on a national phase-out date.

The country is also one of the biggest funders of coal projects abroad. In 2016 and 2017, it provided $1.1 billion of public finance for the construction of new coal plants overseas, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

As of this year, South Korea has 60 coal fired plant units, accounting for a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, and another seven units under construction, according to Climate Analytics. It said Seoul would have to phase out coal by 2029 to do its fair share to tackle climate change.

The post South Korea to implement Green New Deal after ruling party election win appeared first on Climate Home News.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the climate diplomacy timetable has thrown uncertainty over when China, the world’s largest emitter, will issue updated climate policies to the UN. Such plans are due to be submitted this year.

Critical UN climate talks, known as Cop26, intended to spur more ambitious emissions cuts at the first five-year milestone of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, have been postponed to 2021 from the original date of November 2020 in Glasgow.

Governments had been under pressure to submit plans well before November, so the delay gives a little more time.

Under the Paris Agreement decision texts, countries are still expected “by 2020” both to update their climate policies lasting until 2030, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and to publish a longer-term decarbonisation strategy. The deadline is widely interpreted as 31 December this year.

China has repeatedly said it would fulfil its commitments under the Paris accord and planning for its long-term strategy is under way.

On the fringe of the G20 summit last July, China vowed to publish its long-term decarbonisation strategy before the end of this year. It also committed to ramp up its NDC  climate plan “in a manner representing a progression beyond the current one” but without providing a timeline.

Now reeling from an interruption of its productive capacity and a slashed growth forecast – the timetable for climate diplomacy has dropped down the list of Beijing’s priorities. More than 114,000 people have died worldwide from Covid-19.

China’s environment ministry did not respond to an email request for comment on exactly when it would publish its plans.

Chile to peak emissions by 2025, under strengthened climate pledge

“It’s more unlikely now that China will come out with something before the US election,” said Dong Yue, research fellow at the Beijing-based think-tank Energy Foundation China, during a briefing of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Iddri).

The US election – due on 3 November – could be a gamechanger for climate diplomacy.

The US will formally leave the Paris Agreement on 4 November following a decision by President Donald Trump. If elected, Democrat Joe Biden would immediately rejoin the agreement and could make the US a key player for climate action at the postponed Cop26.

“I would certainly expect China’s NDC submission after the US election,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, a former senior advisor on China and climate change under the Obama administration and a professor of energy and environmental policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts, US.

While progress on China’s critical five-year-plan – Beijing’s top-level policy blueprint for 2021-2025 – is expected to go ahead this year, Beijing could wait for the election results to make international commitments, she told Climate Home News.

“If Biden beats Trump then there would also be time for the US to get its act together and reach out to China” to raise ambition, she added, citing the way the world’s two largest economies underpinned the Paris climate accord by agreeing emissions cuts in a 2014 deal.

European Green Deal must be central to a resilient recovery after Covid-19

Sims Gallagher suggested China and India could send nominal NDC updates to the UN before the end of the year and decide to enhance their targets at a later date.

So far, only 7 nations have submitted updated NDCs. About 40 countries have submitted long-term strategies.

In 2015, China formally submitted its first NDC in June, well before the Paris summit in December that year, helping spur action by other nations. Beijing’s core pledge was “to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to peak early”.

Alarming scientific findings about global warming, ranging from deaths of coral reefs to a thaw of Antarctica, have since raised urgency for tougher action by all nations, especially the big emitters.

The United Nations has urged cuts in global emissions of 45% by 2030. China’s per capita emissions were 7.72 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2017, well above the world average of 4.91.

Interministerial consultations on China’s NDC are expected to continue over the next few months and a ministerial line will eventually need to be adopted but those discussions have taken a back seat.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented economic situation,” said Li Shuo, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, from Beijing.

“In the short to medium term, the attention of Chinese leaders will be very much on… trying to revive the economy and this will leave less political and diplomatic space for the environmental agenda.”

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This year’s GDP target – a key political metric in China –  is now the subject of a “heated debate” with “huge implications” for China’s stimulus package, Li said. This “illustrates the level of uncertainty ahead of us… so we may probably allow some more time for issues such as NDC and the long-term strategy”.

Although “China is in technical capacity to enhance its NDC and achieve it,” said Dong, an improved headline target is not the only way Beijing can shift the direction of climate action to 2030.

As the global economy braces for a recession, the spotlight for climate action is shifting to governments’ plans to reboot their economies – without locking-in carbon-intensive infrastructure but accelerating the green transition.

The cash injection into the Chinese economy in the wake of the pandemic comes after Beijing had been facing slower economic growth and employment rates in recent years.

“Before Covid-19 hit out, dark clouds were already hovering above China’s climate politics,” Li said, citing a bounce back of coal consumption and a lack of trust in international diplomacy.

Before the outbreak, China had more than 200GW of new coal-fired power plants at various status of construction and planning.

The US election is even more crucial with UN climate talks delayed to 2021

Now, the recovery efforts and investments decisions will have a long lasting impact on China’s economic structure.

“As the first country to come back from the crisis, China might set the tone on the consistency of the economic stimuli and the climate agenda,” Dong said.

So far, Beijing has been keen to promote “new infrastructures” such as 5G networks, big data centres and artificial intelligence which could boost the efficiency of the economy.

This also includes “shovel-ready” projects that could stimulate green sectors, such as the deployment of charging points for electric vehicles and the expansion of high-speed railway, and create jobs.

In the long-run, Dong said environmental safety, climate, health and social resilience “ should become core metrics of China’s success in recovery – not just its GDP”.

The post China may delay submitting climate plans amid economic slowdown appeared first on Climate Home News.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which represents the world’s airlines, said it wanted to change the baselines from which traffic growth will be judged in coming years to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

It said it wanted  to “avoid an inappropriate economic burden on the sector” by dropping a planned baseline of average emissions in 2019-2020 that is likely to be much lower than 2019 since many flights are now grounded.

As part of efforts to curb the aviation sector’s growing emissions, countries that are members to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) – the UN body responsible for aviation – have agreed an “aspirational goal” to make all growth in international flights carbon neutral after 2020, compared to both 2019 and 2020.

Under the existing plan, countries have agreed to use a market-based offset mechanism known as Corsia. But the public health crisis and collapse of air travel means emissions from aviation are anticipated to fall this year.

A lower 2019-2020 baseline than initially expected would toughen airlines’ goals for curbing emissions growth and force companies to buy a lot more offsets to meet the sector’s climate target when traffic rebounds.

In a position paper, Iata said use of the two-year average could result in “significantly higher offsetting requirements and costs for operators further down the line”.

Coronavirus may toughen airlines’ goals for curbing emissions in 2020s

Iata called on the Icao’s council, the organisation’s governing body, to adjust Corsia’s baseline to 2019.

The trade group said using only 2019 would “preserve the environmental benefits” of Corsia as it “would remain more stringent” than the anticipated baseline, had the coronavirus crisis not happened and airlines’ emissions continued to grow in 2020.

It urged the council to make a decision on the issue before the end of June.

Corsia was agreed in 2016 and a review of the scheme was not expected before 2022.

The trade group’s call for Icao to review Corsia’s implementation comes after China – which has one of the world’s fastest growing air passenger markets – also called for the baseline to be adjusted during a meeting of Icao’s council last month.

The move also comes as the aviation industry is urging governments to provide it with economic relief as the pandemic stalled global travel. The US approved a near $60 billion bailout package for the industry last month.

However, adjusting the baseline would require political approval by other Icao members.

Bas Eickhout, a Green MEP and vice-chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, told Climate Home News Corsia was already “extremely weak” and “won’t bring the aviation sector anywhere near to what is needed to tackle climate change”.

Governments still due to submit tougher climate plans in 2020, despite Cop26 delay

He added that while a lower baseline will force airlines to buy more credits, the credits were “very cheap” at a “couple of euros per tonne of CO2”.

Under Corsia’s first pilot phase to 2023, airlines will be able to offset their emissions using cheap Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) units.

“I don’t see the need for any adjustments now. I trust the EU won’t either,” Eickhout said, adding that any Corsia review would ideally make the baseline stricter, not weaker.

Corsia is due to come into force in January 2021 but will be voluntary for the first six years. That means only flights between countries which have volunteered to participate in the scheme will have to compensate for the growth in their emissions.

From 2027, offsetting obligations will become mandatory for all international flights.

Iata, which championed Corsia, said it was concerned that countries may be less willing to take part in the voluntary pilot phase if the scheme’s costs were higher than initially forecast.

“Current volunteers may reconsider their earlier decisions in order to safeguard the interest of their national air transport system and its connectivity,” it added.

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But observers of UN aviation talks and campaigners say that while a lower baseline would impose greater offsetting requirements on airlines, built-in flexibility provisions could reduce the pandemic’s impact and limit additional financial costs.

Gilles Dufrasne, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch, told CHN the calculation of the baseline using a two-year average was designed to “avoid the impact of an exceptional year”.

“If things had gone the other way, and 2020 was a year of high traffic, we would not be having this discussion,” he said.

“It’s a non-issue,” said Andrew Murphy, aviation campaigner at the NGO Transport & Environment.

“Corsia was due to have next to no impact financially on airlines…. That airlines may have to buy a few million more offsets, industry wide, across three years, is really of no consequence,” he added, accusing Iata of attempting to “stave off more effective government regulation”.

For Tim Johnson, director of the Aviation Environment Federation, “given the need for Icao and industry to align aviation’s climate goals with the Paris Agreement, retaining 2020 as the baseline could turn out to be a positive step forward for climate ambition”.

The post Airlines urge UN body to ease climate goals for 2020s as traffic collapses appeared first on Climate Home News.

The decision to push Cop26 into 2021 from its initial November dates was widely seen as necessary as governments scramble to come to terms with the public health crisis. But for one of the most important climate summits in recent years, the stakes may have just got a lot higher.

The postponement might help shift the world’s attention away from the US election, which was due to take place less than a week before the start of the talks, and will give countries an additional few months to work on their climate plans.

The UK, which is presiding over the talks, had very little time to carry out a huge diplomatic exercise and the extra time could be welcome. But the pressure to ramp up climate action this year is not off.

Governments are still due to submit tougher climate plans to the UN before the end of the year – in line with the Paris Agreement’s decision texts. So far, only four countries have done so.

After the world’s largest emitters failed to respond to UN secretary general António Guterres’ call for greater climate action in New York and governments achieved little at Cop25 in Madrid, Cop26 in Glasgow remains the rendez-vous to kickstart an ambitious transformation of the global economy into the 2020s.

There is no doubt the scope of action for Cop26 is likely to shift. Heading towards a global recession means countries’ economic stimulus packages will come under greater scrutiny, and a green recovery diplomacy could become part of the equation.

Weather warnings

The pandemic threatens the World Meteorological Organisation’s reliability of weather forecasts and climate monitoring.

While much of the global observing system is automated, manual observations are still an important source of information.

The collapse of air travel has led to a “dramatic” decrease of measurements from commercial planes, which provide data on temperature and wind patterns.

Zoom diplomacy

Climate diplomacy has moved online. While the greening of UN Climate Change’s operations is a welcome development, virtual meetings bring a host of new challenges – not least participation.

Low bandwidth and connectivity issues are a regular experience for some negotiators in developing countries, who can’t turn on their video or are kicked out of conversations.

Virtual meetings also remove the human contact, personal ties and spontaneity in discussions that have long been the hallmark of diplomatic deal-making. Speaking to CHN, diplomats from around the world reflect on their Zoom experiences so far.

Not good enough

Japan was the first G7 country to submit a new old 2030 climate plan to the UN.

Tokyo said it would “continue to aim at resolutely achieving” its 2030 goal to cut emissions by 26% – the same goal it set itself in 2015.

The news didn’t fly with the international climate community as countries are expected to submit tougher plans to cut emissions this year. In an unusual rebuke, the UK presidency team said it hoped Tokyo would increase its headline target ahead of Cop26.

Magic liquid

In Malawi, a bountiful and cheap fertiliser is helping farmers bring back nutrients into the soil to grow maize – one of the country’s staple crop.

More than 80% of the sub-Saharan country’s population rely on subsistence farming for their livelihood and the lack of agriculture resources and worsening climate impacts have made the new fertiliser an increasingly popular choice.

Bonus… it’s made of human urine!

This week’s top stories…

• Governments still due to submit tougher climate plans in 2020, despite Cop26 delay
• Cop26 climate talks postponed to 2021 amid coronavirus pandemic
• Zoom climate diplomacy: ‘Technology doesn’t help build trust’
• Coronavirus pandemic threatens climate monitoring, WMO warns
• Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition
• Malawi’s farmers grow crops with ‘magic liquid’ fertiliser

…and climate conversations

• Postponing major environmental summits is the right thing to do
• Coronavirus: investors and policymakers must shift to increase resilience

The post One crisis at a time, please – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a resounding call for governments to stay on track to address the climate crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic, the international climate community have urged countries to submit increased climate plans to the UN by 31 December – in line with the Paris Agreement texts adopted in 2015.

The next round of talks, known as Cop26, have been postponed into next year as the world scrambles to respond to Covid-19, which has killed nearly 42,000 people worldwide as of 2 April.

The decision was taken on the basis that “an ambitious and inclusive” summit in November “was not possible”, and was confirmed on Wednesday night in a joint announcement by UN Climate Change and the UK government, which is due to preside over the talks.

While the move was widely accepted as necessary by negotiators and observers, who stressed the importance of tackling the public health crisis, they insisted the delay should focus efforts on deepening emissions cuts and using the recovery to kickstart the green transformation of the global economy.

Cop26 climate talks postponed to 2021 amid coronavirus pandemic

Marianne Karlsen, of Norway, chair of UN Climate Change’s implementation body (SBI) and a member of the bureau which took the decision to postpone Cop26, told Climate Home News the delay “doesn’t take away the pressure” for countries to submit increased climate plans, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), this year.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement decision texts, countries are expected to submit updated NDCs and publish long-term decarbonisation strategies “by 2020”.

Prior to Cop26 being postponed, countries were under pressure to do so before Cop26 in Glasgow, which was scheduled in November, with enough time for UN Climate Change to take stock of progress made.

The Cop26 delay, now makes the “by 2020” deadline unambiguous as 31 December – giving countries a couple of additional months to present enhanced plans.

“The postponement does not mean that momentum will stop,” Karlsen said. “It doesn’t take away the importance of 2020 – this year is still an important climate year. We just need to find new ways of working.”

Cop25 president and Chile’s environment minister Carolina Schmidt, who will continue to preside over the process until the UK takes over, expressed her determination to ensure momentum for climate action continues, “particularly for the preparation and submissions of new NDCs this year”.

It is unclear if the UK could take over in November as originally planned, or wait until the rescheduled Cop.

Coronavirus pandemic threatens climate monitoring, WMO warns

So far, only four countries – the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Moldova – have done submitted stronger NDCs.

Japan reaffirmed its existing 2030 target earlier this week – a move that was slammed as not good enough by architects of the Paris deal. UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa and the UK Cop26 presidency called on Tokyo to increase its ambition further before Cop26. Switzerland has also reaffirmed its existing NDC plan.

For many developing countries on the frontline of climate impacts, the need for the world’s largest emitters to fulfil their commitments  to take deeper emissions cuts this year is more pressing than ever. Last year was the second warmest year on record and the reality of climate impacts, such as droughts, flooding, seal level rise and extreme weather events has grown ever starker.

“Climate change will continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of our people after the pandemic has ended. As the world responds to one crisis, we cannot let another crisis worsen,” warned Sonam Wangdi, of Bhutan and the chair of a group of 47 least developed countries.

“We need to see all countries do their fair share and submit more ambitious NDCs by the end of the year,” he said, reminding rich countries of their commitments to mobile $100 billion per year from this year to help poorer countries cut emissions and cope with impacts.

The delay of the talks, whose scheduling in November was a planning Rubik’s Cube for many countries, will give governments time to assess the outcome of the US election on 3 November. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidates to challenge President Donald Trump, say they will immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement that the US is formally due to leave on 4 November.

In private, some diplomats expressed hope the delay would help countries align green economic stimulus packages with their commitments to enhance the depth and scope of their climate plans.

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In the UK, government officials are due to present advice on enhancing the country’s NDC by September – a timeline that would have given little time for the UK to leverage others into ramping up action.

For the slow-moving legislative process of the European Union, the November Cop was also a tight deadline. The EU Commission said it would present plans to increase the bloc’s 2030 target by September, which should now gives enough time for members state approval before the talks.

In a statement, EU Commission climate chief Frans Timmermans insisted on the EU’s “strong commitment” to making both Cop26 and plans for a European Green Deal “a success”.

“We will not slow down our work domestically or internationally to prepare for an ambitious Cop26, when it takes place,” Timmermans said, adding the legislative work on both the 2030 and 2052 targets were underway.

The post Governments still due to submit tougher climate plans in 2020, despite Cop26 delay appeared first on Climate Home News.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coronavirus pandemic threatens climate monitoring, WMO warns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the world, millions became unemployed practically overnight and millions lost a huge portion of their savings.

These events will have catastrophic consequences for people’s well-being and will shape economic and political trends for years, if not decades. This doesn’t even account for the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on human health and the tragic situation unfolding in hospitals around the world.

Much will be written about this historical event as society takes stock of what just occurred, but one thing is clear: resilience must be a driving force in the policy response.

As investors of last resort, governments have the key role to play. The central bank playbook in 2008 and 2020 is similar, as liquidity evaporated and financial contagion spread, central banks had to step in as buyers of last resort with increasingly larger rescue packages.

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

At the same time, governments are working desperately on the fiscal front to provide economic stimulus to the real economy and prevent an economic depression. Estimates of bailout packages are in the order of $10 trillion globally and growing.

 So where does this leave us?

Governments and taxpayers bear the ultimate risk and thus have the mandate and responsibility to reduce these risks.

There will be a cost but as we clearly see with the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of prevention pales in comparison. The same could be said about climate change. 

A working paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that by 2100, the costs of climate change would reduce global GDP by 7.22% while the costs of prevention – by meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement – are substantially less, around 1.07% of global GDP.

For the US, the cost of inaction is even higher at 10.5% of GDP. To put things into perspective, this is roughly in line with the costs of a Covid-19 pandemic every year.

Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition

As we move forward past this crisis, policymakers should have resilience in the front of their minds. Below are some practical steps that can be taken in our policy response not only to enable us to boost green growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to create a more resilient financial system.

Rebalance incentives for publicly traded companies to reward long-term sustainability over short-term profits

Companies are too focused on the next quarter at the expense of their long-term financial viability. Fiscal and monetary policies need to reward long-term investment and risk reduction. Executives should not be compensated based on stock performance but broader metrics.

Company boards should emphasise long-term stability and survivability. Inherent in this is the need to address climate risk. Stock buybacks financed with debt should be forbidden.

Better safety nets

Our world is moving towards greater disruptions from climate change, but also other types of crises driven by greater interconnectedness, which generates systemic risk. As we see with Covid-19, a crisis in one place can quickly spread to the rest of the world and this is not limited to communicable diseases.

Financial crises in one corner of the globe can impact our supply chains, and our financial markets as trading in various financial products is linked in incredibly complex arrangements, again, generating systemic risk. A world with more risks needs better safety nets and more resilient systems. There is a need to improve safety nets for all citizens whether these are economic, health and climate-related shocks.

Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies

An estimated $5.2 trillion is spent annually on fossil fuel subsidies. This is wasteful and damaging to the environment. It leads to inefficient use and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, creates rent-seeking in the economy and presents a huge opportunity cost for taxpayers.

Trillions should, instead, be invested in industries of the future which have the potential to provide for our energy needs while eliminating the risk of climate change. With oil at around $25 per barrel, consumer subsidies could be eliminated now with very little consequences.

Embrace telework trends 

As companies and consumers race to adapt to the massive disruptions from Covid-induced shutdowns, we have seen how millions of workers have adapted to working from home and used new technologies to collaborate in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago.

A distributed workforce can increase the resilience of business operations, can massively reduce transport-related emissions from commuting and work-related travel and can even increase the affordability of cities and generate distributional effects as there is less need to concentrate workers in one place.

Embrace the public sector 

View the public sector not as an investor of last resort but as a leader, shaping future investment trends in a way that is aligned with societal goals. Public investment shapes markets and creates benefits to society that the private sector cannot provide.

Through publicly-funded research and development programmes, scientists have developed the core technologies behind the internet and modern medicine. Similarly, the revolutions taking place in renewable energy production, electric storage and electrified transportation would not have been possible without early-stage investments made by the public sector.

Investments for public benefit in areas like new energy technologies, public health and urban infrastructure are critical to reducing long-term risks and can ultimately lower public outlays when disasters strike.

Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly

While there is still hope for this public health threat to be minimised and, hopefully, eventually eliminated, our economic response will have repercussions for decades.

It’s the right time to focus on a vision for a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable economy.

Donovan Escalante is a manager at Climate Policy Initiative, an analysis and advisory organisation that works with governments and investors to drive economic growth while addressing climate change. 

The post Coronavirus: investors and policymakers must shift to increase resilience appeared first on Climate Home News.

And with it, the tough diplomatic and political ask expected ahead of a critical climate summit in Glasgow, or Cop26, in November has also become a technological challenge.

“Some of us might be cut off or the sound might not work very well so we will need to adjust to that. As the Adaptation Committee, we can do it very well,” smiled Olga Pilifosova, manager of the Adaptation programme at UN Climate Change secretariat, from an online Zoom meeting.

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change – such as heatwaves, floods, and droughts – is part of a two-pronged UN strategy alongside mitigation, focused on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The coronavirus which as of Tuesday killed more than 36,500 people worldwide has forced UN Climate Change to find new, greener, ways of working, pushing climate diplomacy into the digital space.

The Cop26 presidency team is holding “virtual trips” and international meetings through video and phone conferences.

I will shortly be co-chairing via video link the India-led global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.

We must continue to deliver progress in tackling climate change and this - partnership is an important step towards doing that. #COP26

— Alok Sharma (@AlokSharma_RDG) March 20, 2020

UN Climate Change announced it won’t hold any physical meetings until the end of April and although a number of meetings have been postponed, smaller sessions have moved online. It’s too early to say whether the pandemic will affect Cop26, and UN Climate Change is set to decide on Wednesday evening about a mid-year session due in Bonn in June.

As Zoom diplomacy takes hold, the informal spaces for negotiators to meet at the coffee machine or for a corridor chat have been replaced with a much more streamlined process online.

While the cancellation of all carbon-intensive air travel is a positive side effect of the crisis for the international climate community, adapting to virtual meeting brings its own challenges.

For many developing countries, where fibre-optic cables are not available and bandwidth is low, connectivity, and therefore participation, has proved difficult at times.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

“The problem is that in some countries, internet is still an expensive luxury,” Alpha Kaloga, a climate negotiator from Guinea, told Climate Home News.

But delay to climate action is not an option. “Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we want and need the work to get done, but we want it to be inclusive,” Kaloga added.

During a virtual meeting of the Warsaw International Mechanism – the international framework which addresses climate impacts which emissions cuts and adaptation efforts cannot prevent – one of two African representatives dialling in from Sudan was unable to participate because of low bandwidth.

UN Climate Change is working to ensure everyone can participate to online meetings.

In 2018, UN Climate Change spent $12 million on travel for participants and staff. Now, its travel team is offering to book delegates with connectivity issues hotel rooms close to their homes, to ensure they can still participate in online sessions.

Where possible, other UN regional offices could also be put at delegates’ disposal dependent on domestic travel restrictions.

And a narrow two-hour window in the middle of day Central European Time has been identified to accommodate the greatest time zone span. It is daytime in Europe and Africa, evening in Asia, early morning in the Americas, but the middle of the night in the Pacific.

Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition

While virtual meetings are a necessary short-term fix, in the longer-term poorer nations will need additional technological capacity.

Tenzin Wangmo, of Bhutan and the lead negotiator for a group of Least Developed Countries (LDC), told CHN that even in small meetings, LDC negotiators often had to turn off the video function to ensure better connection.

“Infrastructure is going to be a challenge for the LDC group.  Definitely, it’s going to impact the substance of the discussions,” she said, adding that many LDC countries had just started to work on their new climate plans and much of that work was now halted.

“I don’t think having a meeting using technology can help build trust between each other,” she added.

Speaking to CHN, Carlos Fuller, of Belize and lead negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), said it was difficult to imagine online meetings extending to the whole climate diplomacy process and to the climate talks which bring together nearly 200 countries.

“We [Aosis] interact well because it’s a smaller group and we know each other. But I still want to see how a global meeting is going to work on a Zoom platform,” Fuller said. Wangmo agreed: “I don’t think we can bring all-party negotiations online. I think that would impact participation.”

Part of the reason is that for an online meeting “to be successful, it is to be short,” Fuller added, finding a silver lining in the need for some efficiency improvement.

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But efficiency does not necessarily mean the same thing for everyone. “You end up addressing the most important issues for the most important players,” one developing nation diplomat warned.

Virtual meetings also remove the human contact, personal ties and spontaneity in discussions that have long been the hallmark of diplomatic deal-making. Popular online meeting platforms also don’t support instant translations and negotiators can no longer rely on body language.

“Negotiations are like role play and you really need to be face to face to do that,” one diplomat told CHN. “You get a feeling if there is tension in the room, how people react to propositions and it’s easier to test ideas”.

This bargaining aspect of diplomacy has seen negotiators long favour closed doors meetings to broker deals and compromise. Online conversations are much easily recorded, which may allow more transparency but does not suit everyone’s negotiating strategy.

“That changes the type of conversations that can take place,” the diplomat added.

Many agree UN Climate Change processes would benefit from more efficient processes, more virtual meetings and less international travel. “This is forcing us to think about how we operate,” one veteran negotiator told CHN, “but it is not going to create the dynamic that we need” before Cop26.

“And a crisis coping-mechanism is not necessarily the way we want to adapt in the long term”.

The post Zoom climate diplomacy: ‘Technology doesn’t help build trust’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

As trillions of dollars pour into the global economy to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19, resounding calls have been made to governments and financial institutions to ensure longer term climate action is a condition for relief.

With carbon-intensive sectors lining up for economic support to protect the jobs of millions of people, calls are also intensifying for workers to benefit over corporations.

In a statement, G20 countries said they were injecting more than $5 trillion into the global economy to counteract the social, economic and financial impacts of the pandemic. The virus has killed more than 24,000 people worldwide.

In the US, the Senate unanimously passed a gigantic $2-trillion bill aimed at helping workers and industries impacted by the rapid economic slowdown. This includes a $500 billion fund to help hard-hit industries and more than $60 billion for airlines with some strings attached.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi praised Democrats’ efforts to “flip the bill over” from a “corporate trickle-down Republican version to bubble-up workers first, families first legislation” with conditions that money given to the airlines for example “are given to the workers directly”.

In Canada, academics, labour and environmental organisations have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration that any bailout to the oil and gas sector should benefit the workers, not the corporations, and that the economic stimulus should be green.

In Europe, there are clear calls for any economic stimulus package to be consistent with the continent’s pledge to become climate-neutral by 2050 and pinned to the Green Deal framework.

While many agree the pandemic has opened a window to accelerate the transition to a green economy, the question of timing remains key.

As governments scramble to reinforce health services to save lives and put cash in the hands of hard-hit families and businesses, some analysts warn the immediate crisis will need to pass before investments can be directed to the clean energy transition. When and how this happens could determine climate action for years to come.

Eyes in the sky 

Scientists at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii are monitoring the atmosphere for signs the economic slowdown linked to the coronavirus pandemic could reduce the rise in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

Alister Doyle spoke to Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling, the founder of the Keeling Curve, which has been tracking increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since 1958.

“There has never been an economic shock like this in the whole history of the curve,” he said.

This month, the data hints at a slight slowdown in the rate of CO2 rise. But the scientists will need more time to know whether this possible trend is linked to the pandemic.

‘Baby steps’ 

Russia has published draft plans to slightly toughen its 2030 climate targets that would still allow its emissions to rise in the next decade.

The UN is demanding countries make deep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the scientific findings to achieve the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

But the world’s fifth biggest emitter projected its emissions would rise in coming years to 67% of its 1990 level by 2030 – a slight improvement on its current 75% target. Russia’s emissions plunged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and are still about half the levels they were in 1990.

Environmental NGOs have criticised the plan as inadequate in a time of climate crisis. “It’s only baby steps,” said Vladimir Chuprov, of Greenpeace in Moscow.

Electric drive 

Electric cars are a greener alternative to petrol and diesel vehicles in almost every part of the world.

Researchers have found that plug-in cars emit less greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime than other vehicles, even when including the mining of metals for batteries, the manufacturing process and scraping.

This is true everywhere but in countries where the electricity used to recharge electric vehicles is generated from coal-fired power plants, the study found, noting blackspots in India, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria.

This week’s top stories

• Coronavirus: in Hawaii’s air, scientists seek signs of economic shock on CO2 levels
• Russia’s plans to tighten 2030 climate goal criticised as ‘baby steps’
• Electric cars help limit climate change despite blackspots in India, Poland
• Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

And in climate conversations

• Coronavirus pandemic shows we need new ways to look after the Earth and each other
• From summits to stimulus: Nature-based solutions can help

The post Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Mauna Loa observatory at 3,397 metres is home to the Keeling Curve, tracking increasing carbon dioxide concentrations since 1958. Named after its late founder, Charles Keeling, it is widely viewed as the most iconic measure of humanity’s impact on global climate.

“There has never been an economic shock like this in the whole history of the curve,” Ralph Keeling, professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and son of Charles Keeling, told Climate Home News of the impact of the coronavirus.

He said scientists were now studying data from the mountain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for signs that the economic slowdown linked to the coronavirus could reduce the rise in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

The coronavirus, which has killed more than 22,000 people by 26 March, is slowing the global economy and cutting the use of fossil fuels in cars, power plants and factories that emit carbon dioxide. “I can look out of my window now and the number of cars has dropped,” he said.

Russia’s plans to tighten 2030 climate goal criticised as ‘baby steps’

But there was a long way from reduced use of fossil fuels to a crisis that would affect carbon dioxide concentrations in the global atmosphere.

Keeling estimated that global fossil fuel use would have to decline by 10% for a full year to show up in carbon dioxide concentrations. Even then, it would be a difference of only about 0.5 parts per million.

Since 1958 there have been no world wars, for instance, that might abruptly depress economic activity and emissions and show up as a measurable impact on the curve, he said.

Recessions, like the 2008-09 financial crisis or even the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, did not cause a discernible drop. And other factors that have tended to drive the curve up more steeply, such as the economic rise of China this century, were not visible as sudden events.

This March 2020 data may hint at a slight slowdown in the rate of rise.

“It’s too early to say,” if it is related to coronavirus, Keeling said, adding there were big variations from year to year and that the March trend was similar to some previous years.

Two-year record of carbon dioxide (Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

Current carbon concentrations  “are approaching last year’s peak right now,” he said, at about 415 parts per million on 24 March, with big daily swings. If sustained, that is already in line with the record high, judged as a monthly average, of 414.7 ppm for the May 2019.

Carbon dioxide levels have risen from about 270 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and are at the highest in at least 800,000 years, according to the UN panel of climate scientists.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

Carbon dioxide concentrations have their annual peak at the end of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, where North America, Asia and Europe make up most of the planet’s land masses. When spring arrives, plant growth on these continents soaks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, slightly reducing levels.

Keeling likened economic activity affecting the atmosphere to a tap pouring water into a bathtub.

If you turn down the tap in a bathtub you can see there is less water coming in “but it takes a while to be able to see that the rising water level slows,” he said. “We’re still in that phase.”

The Keeling Curve, Mauna Loa Observatory

On the other side of the world in Norway, Kim Holmen, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, says his team is also closely monitoring carbon dioxide levels at the Zeppelin station on a mountain on the Arctic island of Svalbard.

“The curve is not pointing upwards,” he said of carbon dioxide measurements in March, which are usually rising at this time of year. Still, he said that it would probably take months to know if it was related to coronavirus.

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And he said there were many local factors affecting carbon levels, even in parts of the world isolated from industrial centres such as Hawaii or Svalbard.

Around Svalbard, for instance, “it has been colder this winter than the past 10 years,” Holmen said. That meant there had been more ice on the surrounding seas in the winter, putting a lid on waters that can release carbon dioxide into the air.

The UN wants steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit rising temperatures to goals set in the Paris Agreement of “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times while pursuing efforts for a stricter ceiling of 1.5C.

Emissions rose sharply after the financial crisis but Keeling expressed hopes that policy makers would help drive cuts in coming years, after the pandemic passes.

“We can hope that emissions stay down for the right reasons afterwards. This [coronavirus] is not the right reason,” he said.

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Governments are quite rightly focusing on emergency response measures to slow the spread of the virus, save as many lives as possible and take whatever steps they can to relieve the economic hardship people in every country are already facing.

We don’t yet know how much longer it will be until the virus is brought to heel and how much worse things will get until that point. That is the reality we are all trying to come to terms with.

For many of us in the climate and environmental communities, we are simultaneously trying to come to terms with the fact that the landscape for restoring balance to the world’s ecosystems has fundamentally changed.

At the start of the year, much of our planning revolved around major milestones like the biodiversity summit in China and the climate summit in the UK, and how these moments might drive more action from countries, regions, cities, businesses and others to reduce emissions and protect and restore nature.

Now it appears that if we can get beyond the immediate medical emergency, our focus will need to shift from summits to stimulus.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

Will governments direct spending in ways that increase emissions and continue to degrade nature? Or will they have the foresight to not only tackle the immediate economic impacts, but also accelerate the transition to resilient, low-carbon and nature-rich societies and economies?

That is likely still some time off, although we are already seeing early examples of the paths governments can choose.

For example, South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party has announced plans for a “Green New Deal” to boost its economy and fulfil its pledge to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Similar questions are springing up around the world, including in the EU, with debate already emerging whether the bloc should double down on the EU Green Deal, or to back away from this ambitious plan.

Much of the discussion so far has focused on the opportunity for economic stimulus packages to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels toward clean energy sources. This is critical, but we must also consider the role that nature-based solutions can play.

To start, protecting natural ecosystems is one of the most immediate steps governments can take to reduce the risk of future pandemics.

Science shows that humanity’s destruction of biodiversity is creating the conditions for new viruses and diseases. Deforestation drives wild animals out of their natural habits and closer to human populations, creating greater opportunities for viruses like Covid-19 to spread.

Coronavirus pandemic shows we need new ways to look after the Earth and each other

But nature-based solutions, as a broad array of actions, deserve much deeper consideration as governments decide how to design their economic responses to the coronavirus.

The bottom line is that, in addition to being an essential component of the response to climate change, nature-based solutions also provide a range of other benefits that will help communities recover from the immediate impacts, as well as support more resilient and sustainable societies and economies in the longer term.

Natural ecosystems provide clean air and clean water, they make communities more resilient to the growing impacts of a warming climate, like protection against floods and hurricanes, and they support and create jobs, particularly in more rural and vulnerable communities.

Analysis last year by the Food and Land Use Coalition found that key transitions in the world’s food and land use systems alone could unlock $4.5 trillion in new business opportunities each year by 2030.

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This is at the same time as saving costs of $5.7 trillion a year in damage to people and the planet. There is also increasing recognition that ‘green infrastructure’ – forests, wetlands, and mangroves for example – can perform better and at lower cost than ‘grey infrastructure’ for services such as flood management, water purification and storage and irrigation.

The potential here is huge: the OECD estimates global financing needs for water supply infrastructure at $6.7 trillion by 2030 and $22.6 trillion by 2050.

Governments must ensure that public spending to address the current economic crisis aims to both reduce emissions and restore balance to all the Earth’s natural systems. Long-term stimulus investment must be used to build a better future; this means spending needs to be aligned with both halving emissions and stopping nature loss by 2030.

Lucy Almond is the director of Nature4Climate, a consortium of some of the world’s leading nature conservation, climate and business organisations that aims to increase investment and action on nature-based solutions in support of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The post From summits to stimulus: Nature-based solutions can help appeared first on Climate Home News.

As we see confirmed cases grow exponentially, grocery stores run out of food, and economies falter, it is an opportunity to understand what so many Indigenous communities have understood from time immemorial: we are all connected.

Our economies, our human relationships, and our germs have very few degrees of separation. Practicing altruistic interdependence in this pandemic moment – and this ecological moment – might just be what can support life and living.

The climate crisis is increasing the prevalence and spread of disease, which disproportionately impacts the poor. Likewise, Covid-19 is kicking off an economic downturn and disproportionately impacting those without insurance or access to health care, amplifying the impact of the climate crisis on marginalised communities.

Covid-19 makes everyone more vulnerable to the accelerating effects of the climate crisis. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier, as is the coronavirus.

An economic downturn, coupled with xenophobia and layoffs, will accelerate the social impacts of what is heading towards the hottest year on record. We need to examine patterns of power and access to services—from who is suffering to who gets tested and treated to who is making the decisions.

The pandemic is and will have much greater impacts on those already bearing the greatest brunt of climate change.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

Who are those that will bear the greatest burden of this pandemic? The same people who are most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis: low-income, houseless, undocumented, or disabled peoples who experience systematic discrimination from healthcare systems. Migrants and refugees experiencing greater xenophobia and deportation will suffer. Incarcerated folks, already climate stressed, will suffer great risk of infection.

The pandemic brings the injustice of our economies and culture into acute relief: from increased slave labour in Hong Kong prisons due to a depressed workforce, to the woeful treatment of migrants. It highlights how the ecological crisis compromises public health, from those without clean drinking water to wash their hands to those with poor respiratory health because of pollution.

Near my hometown of Seattle, a motel converted into a quarantine site is in a low-income community that was not consulted about the decision, just like those same communities have experienced with extractive industries the world over.

For both the climate crisis and coronavirus, the same people will benefit: those at the helm of disaster capitalism. We are already seeing this with the proposed stimulus package in the US bailing out the highest emitting companies and devastating social security.

The climate crisis consolidates power, both by who can and who cannot adapt and who receives the resources to respond.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

Our energy system, alongside many countries’ healthy systems, are designed for profit, rather than well-being. As the tell-tale signs of disaster capitalism appear in the wake of pandemic fear (e.g., mask and sanitiser price hikes and medicine scams), we can learn from communities like those in Puerto Rico choosing community care over corporate credos.

The coronavirus pandemic shows us that we can change our ways, and quickly. Millions are learning new ways to work remotely, collaborate across sectors, or provide healthcare in ways previously touted as impossible. The coronavirus is the best case for universal healthcare worldwide and climate justice solutions that promote community cohesion.

Grassroots climate justice movements are building the political power and self-determination of communities worldwide, which makes them better equipped to handle these kinds of crises. Greater community sovereignty means fewer people are displaced and made more vulnerable to disease, and more people can sustain collective health in place.

Coronavirus and climate change are two crises that need humanity to unite

For example, in Northern California after the last few years of deadly fires, long-running climate justice community groups have built strong response networks. Mutual aid for those with disabilities, the elderly, and the houseless are now being activated in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Just like many catastrophic climate impacts, it is not a question of if pandemics will occur, but a matter of when. We are at an inflection point. How will we respond? In our fear-based state, will we hoard and exclude? Or will we embrace our interdependence and choose collective action?

Maybe this is Earth’s wake-up call. The coronavirus is exposing our dysfunctional leadership and sparking new ways of caring for each other and the planet.

Perhaps we can refocus on collective care, cooperation, and community. Whatever unfolds, the best investment we can make is in the communities already fiercely protecting the health of the Earth and her peoples.

Lindley Mease is the director of the CLIMA Fund, which resources grassroots climate justice movements across the globe.

The post Coronavirus pandemic shows we need new ways to look after the Earth and each other appeared first on Climate Home News.

Over the last week, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stopgap measures have been announced to fight the coronavirus and limit economic shortfalls.

In the US, industries are scrambling for a share of a $1 trillion-stabilisation package with the aviation industry expected to receive a large chunk.

Last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a €870 billion ($781bn) emergency bond-buying programme to stabilise the euro zone economy until the end of the year – the equivalent of 7.3% of the euro area’s GDP.

In contrast, the EU Commission has promised a trillion euros over a decade to finance its Green Deal and support the union’s plan to be the first climate neutral continent by 2050.

Resounding calls have been made for governments and international financial institutions to put the clean energy transition at the heart of stimulus packages, once the human tragedy eases. Almost 15,000 people have died in the pandemic with more than 340,000 confirmed cases by Monday.

“We have a responsibility to recover better” than after the financial crisis in 2008, UN secretary general António Guterres warned.

“We have a framework for action – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We must keep our promises for people and planet,” he added.

But short-term measures designed to stabilise the economy are so far doing little for the transition.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

In Europe, the bond-buying programme announced by the ECB – one of Europe’s most powerful institutions – follows the bank’s current purchasing criteria, which proscribes the bank from preferring one sector over another, instead buying what is available on the market.

An ECB spokesman told CHN the bank’s portfolio “will have an increasing number of green bonds” since these are rising on the market, but their total numbers remain limited.

Stanislas Jourdan, head of Positive Money Europe, a campaign group that has called for the ECB to do more to promote green finance, said the bank committed to a mass purchase of bonds “without any climate considerations”.

“Though the ECB is rightly aiming at addressing the coronavirus crisis, there is a risk that fossil fuels free-ride on those measures to gain even cheaper financing to maintain their activities,” Jourdan told Climate Home News.

The move will likely put more pressure on the bank’s upcoming strategic review of its monetary policy, which is due to consider climate risk, Jourdan added. The ECB is also expected to look at ways it can help drive the continent’s decarbonisation.

Ronan Palmer, who leads the environmental think-tank E3G’s clean economy programme, told CHN that while Europe needed an immediate economic stabilisation package, such measures should be consistent with the EU’s 2050 net zero emission goal.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

As fossil-fuel intensive sectors such as the oil and gas and aviation industries are also lining up for economic relief, “this must be the time to keep these firms afloat providing some conditionality on how these companies operate in the future,” he said.

For example, an automotive company could be bailed out on the condition it accelerates the electrification of the fleet when the immediate crisis passes.

NGO Transport & Environment has urged EU governments to make any financial aid to airlines conditional on carriers paying taxes and starting to use low-carbon fuels once conditions improved.

This, Palmer added, would help governments and companies move away from increasingly risky fossil fuel investments “in a controlled manner”.

In the less immediate term, Palmer said he hoped the EU would “clip a recovery package to its Green Deal” – and use recovery efforts to boost energy efficiency, the electrification of transport, the deployment of renewable energy as well as land use change reforms.

“This is the big political battle,” warned Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement.

“We can make the right choices and address the short economic crisis at the same time as making sure we don’t lock in the economy in Europe into a fossil fuel economy,” she told reporters last week.

“There are many areas where we could take the elements of the Green Deal and quick start them with massive investments that governments are ready to go for anyway,” she said.

Coronavirus response to delay EU Green Deal by weeks

Tubiana insisted the EU needed to start aligning its economic response to the virus with its Green Deal as soon as possible.

“Or we accelerate the implementation of a green deal or I’m very concerned this will be a totally wasted opportunity because the fiscal resources will be use immediately to tackle the [coronavirus] crisis,” she said, adding this could sap the EU’s capacity to make progress on the Green Deal.

Under the Green deal, the EU committed to become climate-neutral by 2050, increase its 2030 climate target, ensure no-one is left behind in the energy transition and transform key sectors such as constructing and renovating buildings, agriculture and transport.

How quickly the promised stimulus money can help boost clean energy investments is, however, up for debate.

“Right now there is much competition for that stimulus money,” Samantha Gross, a fellow in the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate, told CHN, making a focus on clean energies and technologies “challenging” in the short-term.

Gross said the low cost of renewable energy and plummeting interest rates would, in time, constitute favourable conditions for mass investments in the energy transition. “But we need to get out of this crisis mode before businesses can take advantage of these conditions,” she said.

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For Albert Cheung, head of global analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the economic response to the pandemic will happen in two stages.

The first few months to a year is “when you get cash into people’s hands”, he told CHN. While the next couple of years can be spent shaping the recovery effort.

“That is the opportunity for green investments and putting people back to work in jobs that can accelerate the clean energy transition,” he said.

While stabilisation packages might not immediately assist the clean energy transition, the extraordinary scale of the response by governments and central banks is setting a precedent for similar measures to be rolled out to tackle the climate crisis, Jourdan told CHN.

Ronan agreed. “It shows what they [central banks] might be able to do when their put their full weight behind the climate crisis.”

The post Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under the plan, UN Environment urged massive investments in energy efficiency for buildings, a boost for wind and solar energy, cuts in fossil fuel subsidies and a host of other measures. It reckoned the bill would amount to 1% of global GDP, or about $750 billion.

But the global economy rebounded, still reliant on fossil fuels, despite efforts to diversify. Carbon dioxide emissions grew by a huge 5.8% in 2010, after a 1.4% dip in 2009, and have risen most years since.

Will the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 10,000 people worldwide, offer a new chance to shape a greener, more sustainable world when the economy revives?

Read Chloé Farand’s insightful interview with Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, in which he says governments have a “historic opportunity” to usher in an era of climate action when they design long-term stimulus packages.

“Well put @IEABirol,” Christiana Figueres, the former head of UN Climate Change and an architect of the Paris Agreement, commented about the article in a tweet. “We have a massive crisis = opportunity on our hands. We cannot afford to waste it. Recovery must be green.”

In recent years, the idea of green new deals – which echo US President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal after the Great Depression – have caught on in many nations as a way to combat the climate crisis.

And the world now has a lesson to learn from the failings a decade ago.

“We have a responsibility to recover better” than after the financial crisis, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday, saying the global health crisis was unlike any in the 75-year history of the UN.

“We have a framework for action – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We must keep our promises for people and planet,” he added.

The task is daunting. The UN says global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 7.6% a year are needed over the next decade to get on track to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.

But the Covid-19 emergency has opened a new window for a clean energy transition for the world economy.

Slow burn

The pandemic is slowing developing nations’ efforts to work out more ambitious climate plans, which are due to be submitted before talks in Glasgow, still scheduled for November, at the first five-year milestone of the Paris Agreement.

“We are entering into unknown territory,” said Jahan Chowdhury, in-country engagement director for the NDC Partnership, which supports about 75 developing countries design and deliver their climate plans.

The coronavirus is also disrupting Brussels’ legislative process, now unable to work at full capacity. This may delay the EU’s work on its Green Deal, under which the EU Commission wants Europe to be the world’s first carbon-neutral continent, Frédéric Simon at Euractiv writes.

Side effect  

The economic slowdown in China caused by the virus has at least one positive side-effect that is also now visible by satellites over Italy: less deadly air pollution.

The World Health Organisation says air pollution causes seven million deaths worldwide every year, by triggering cancers, heart and lung diseases.

In China alone, reduced air pollution could avert between 50,000 and 100,000 premature deaths if levels stay low for a whole year, according to researchers at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway. They estimate that more than a million people die every year in China from air pollution.

Contaminated 

Illustrating the risks of international travel and face-to-face meetings, the first coronavirus case in Liberia was recorded after an observer returned from a Green Climate Fund meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

The meeting went ahead after being moved as a precaution from the GCF headquarters in Songdo, South Korea, at a time when the nation had become one of the world’s hotspots for the virus.

This week’s top stories

• Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020
• Coronavirus enters Liberia after observer returns from Green Climate Fund meeting
• Coronavirus response to delay EU Green Deal by weeks
• Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says
• Coronavirus: China’s economic slowdown curbs deadly air pollution

The post ‘Historic opportunity’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an interview with Climate Home News on Tuesday, Fatih Birol said stimulus packages to prop up economic recovery marked a critical moment for governments to “shape policies” in line with climate action.

“I am talking with several governments and international financial institutions leaders because they are all busy designing stimulus programmes for the economy – the plans they will put together will be extremely important,” he said.

“This is the reason I am telling them that we can use the current situation to step up our ambition to tackle climate change.”

Birol said he had urged political and global financial leaders to design “sustainable stimulus packages” that focus on investing in clean energy technologies and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.

“This is a historic opportunity for the world to, on one hand, create packages to recover the economy, but on the other hand, to reduce dirty investments and accelerate the energy transition,” he said.

Coronavirus: China’s economic slowdown curbs deadly air pollution

The health crisis has hammered the economy in the week since the World Health Organisation declared coronavirus a pandemic. Stock markets have seen some of their toughest days of trading, sparking fears of a global economic recession.

The aviation industry has come under particularly strains in recent weeks, with a number of airlines announcing a dramatic scale-back of their operations and executives calling for government bailouts to avoid bankruptcy.

“The global economy is going through very difficult times and the energy sector is disproportionately affected,” said Birol. “Aviation represents 1% of the global economy but it’s 8% of global oil consumption.”

“I understand that when I talk to governments, they are very much preoccupied with the current economic turmoil but we should keep the eye on the ball that is addressing climate change,” he said.

Birol was speaking before reports in US media that President Donald Trump would be seeking an $850 billion stimulus package, including $50 billion for airlines.

Last year, a report by UN Environment found the world needed to cut emissions by 7.6% per year until 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century – the tougher temperature goal countries committed to under the Paris Agreement.

Coronavirus may toughen airlines’ goals for curbing emissions in 2020s

In most recent years, global emissions have increased but they stagnated in 2019, according to an IEA analysis.

Birol insisted 2019 could mark a definite peak in emissions, but only if governments seized interventions to recover from the impacts of the coronavirus as the moment to gear the economy towards a green transition.

“It may well be the case that we will see 2020 emissions decline. In my view, this is not a reason to celebrate because emissions reduction should be the result of right energy policies,” he said.

In a statement last week, Birol wrote that such policies could include large-scale investments in clean energy technologies such as solar, wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies.

The massive investment plan outlined by Birol echoed proposals such as the EU Commission’s “green deal for Europe” aimed at accelerating the shift of capital towards the green economy while creating climate-proof jobs.

The IEA has previously come under criticism for underplaying the speed of renewable energy deployment and for not considering the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious target of 1.5C in its influential World Energy Outlook scenarios.

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Birol also advocated for countries to capitalise on low interest rates to boost innovation on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technology, and use the opportunity of steep reductions in oil prices to cut fossil fuel consumption subsidies.

The IEA estimates annual fossil fuel consumption subsidies are worth $400 billion worldwide, 40% of which are used to make oil products cheaper.

Birol expressed optimism governments could bend the emissions growth curve this year because of a number of favourable factors.

An IEA analysis found that 70% of global energy investments is driven by governments directly or indirectly as a response to policy. Meanwhile, the low cost of clean energy strengthens the economic case for the clean energy transition to drive stimulus packages.

“This is a huge opportunity we cannot miss,” he said. “Here the issue is not only the level of money [dedicated to stimulate the economy] but the direction of the money,” he said.

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It is worth thinking through at this point what the impact of the pandemic may be on climate change and climate actions – in terms of emissions, global and national politics and social change.

The drop in global emissions caused by the coronavirus will reflect the level of its impact on global economic activity.

Reports have already shown that measures to contain it have caused output across key industrial sectors in China to drop by as much as 40%, which is likely to have wiped out a quarter or more of its carbon emissions since February.

Obviously, a drop in emissions is not a bad thing from a purely climate change perspective. But what counts in terms of meaningful action to address the climate crisis is long-term structural change, in particular replacing fossil fuels as fast as possible from all sectors.

If there is a temporary reduction in emissions in 2020, that could encourage a false sense that global emissions are on a long-term decline when in fact they are not. A coronavirus induced drop in world emissions will mean very little in the long run on its own.

If handled badly, the pandemic could suck the energy out of public action and public policy as prosperity declines.

Coronavirus delays global efforts for climate and biodiversity action

Governments will need over the longer term to provide stimulus to economies that suffer from the impact of the coronavirus.

One way could be to fund elements of the green transition, thereby creating jobs. Helping economies and societies that suffer to recover and start the shift to a low emissions future is a way to meet both short and long-term social needs.

Governments need to respond effectively and fast to the coronavirus. That could distract attention and divert resources away from focusing on the climate crisis in the short term.

All countries need to do more in terms of their climate commitments to be ready for the Glasgow climate conference in November. A short-term focus on coronavirus is obviously necessary but must not distract from investment in climate action. Otherwise valuable time needed to build momentum for Cop26 could be lost.

The pandemic could also affect social movements’ ability to organise to demand climate action. Where these voices can no longer be expressed in public spaces, politicians and policy makers need to listen in other ways and remember public concern has not gone away.

Coronavirus is already having an impact on a range of preparatory meetings, which bear on the chances that the Glasgow climate meeting will deliver the action it must, such as significant national emissions reduction pledges in richer countries and an increase in climate finance to support low carbon transition and resilience in the poorest countries.

Will governments pass the first test of the Paris climate agreement in 2020?

As time goes on, major international meetings such as the intersessionals due to be held in June, may have to be cancelled, delayed or done virtually.

Even if COP26 can be held as planned, much time for essential groundwork may have been lost. Perhaps the biggest risk is that the intensive programme of diplomatic activity in the run up to it will be disrupted.

The EU-China summit in September, for example, is potentially critical for persuading China to adopt a more ambitious stance on mitigation. Even if it goes ahead it may be harder to get a result if the preparatory meetings have been disrupted.

If international organisations can learn how to run these processes effectively and equitably with less long-haul flying something positive may come from this. But there is a real risk that poorer countries will be disenfranchised if the transition to virtual meetings is not handled with equality of voice in mind.

Both basic problems of bandwidth and quality of ‘kit’, as well as issues with access to the process of planning for virtual meetings could work to marginalise poorer countries.

IIED works closely with the Least Developed Countries group in the climate negotiations and we will be tracking whether the trend to virtual meetings hinders the chances for poorer countries to have a voice.  It is an area where some smart and agile use of a relatively small amount of climate finance might make a real difference.

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Urgent response is needed on both climate and the pandemic. Maybe the immediacy of the threat of coronavirus will make it easier to find that urgency.

In many richer countries (but few poorer ones) the threat of the climate crisis does not feel immediate. But the politics of action are also vastly different.

With the coronavirus there are no interest groups which benefit directly from promoting inaction and delay like the fossil fuel industry does with climate change. Supposedly innate characteristics of human perception are certainly not the whole story – politics and vested interests matter too.

Perhaps the pandemic will produce changes which make societies more willing to act on the climate crisis in the long run.

Strengthening recognition of our interdependence —that everyone’s health is everyone else’s business – could strengthen the understanding that compassion and empathy are functional traits for humanity.

Coronavirus: UN delays talks on global ocean biodiversity treaty

Acceptance of the need to make sacrifices and accept restraints for both the common good and personal wellbeing could help increase understanding of the huge shifts in regulation and behaviour that are needed to address the climate crisis.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but changes in values do not happen in linear ways and crisis events can also be used as opportunities for change.

The coronavirus pandemic is a global tragedy on a scale that is still uncertain, and the possibilities are hard to fully grasp. It will certainly throw up some formidable practical problems for climate action and may make landing the key changes we need to see at Cop26 in November harder.

But in the long run if it leads to a deeper understanding of the ties that bind us all on a global scale maybe it can help, rather than hinder, the chance of humanity getting to grips with the climate crisis.

Andrew Norton is the director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

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Governments had been due to agree a global treaty in April to safeguard life in seas beyond the national jurisdiction of coastal states, a poorly regulated region accounting for two-thirds of the global ocean.

Over-fishing, shipping, plastic pollution and the potential of seabed mining are among the threats already affecting marine ecosystems. Meanwhile, climate impacts such as warming waters, rising acidity and shifting current patterns are also undermining the resilience of marine biodiversity.

A resolution adopted by consensus by the plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday agreed to postpone the talks to “the earliest possible available date” because of the coronavirus outbreak.

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

“Very sad but this is the right thing to do. We will be back and conclude our negotiations of this important new treaty to protect our oceans,” Catherine Boucher, legal advisor to Canada’s mission to the UN, wrote in a tweet.

Coronavirus delays global efforts for climate and biodiversity action

This is the latest of a number of climate and biodiversity meeting to be cancelled or postponed because of the virus.

Observers and delegates previously expressed concerns the March session would be unable to break deadlock between nations and that at least one more negotiating round would be needed. A UN document from February listing governments’ proposed changes to a draft treaty text runs to 350 pages.

There are currently few guidelines, for instance, for setting up marine protected areas in the high seas, which conservation experts say are necessary to prevent biodiversity losses. The Marine Conservation Institute estimates that only 1.2% of the high seas are in protected areas.

The negotiations, which started in September 2018, have so far made little progress on some of the most important issues. This includes the governance process to ensure rules on state and companies’ activities in the high seas are respected.

Sandra Schoettne, of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign, told Climate Home News she hoped the postponement “doesn’t slow political momentum” and urged governments to “use the additional time wisely to adopt a treaty as robust as possible”.

“A bit more time to resolve some of the differences on the more tricky aspects of the negotiations is not a bad thing,” Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at the University of York, UK, told CHN.

“We don’t want to botch it by rushing,” he said. “And a poorly attended meeting wouldn’t help.”

Power structures over gender make women more vulnerable to climate change

One of the sticking points in the negotiations is about how to share any benefits from genetic resources found in the high seas, such as health supplements developed from Antarctic krill, or cosmetics from creatures found around thermal vents on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

Developed nations generally favour allowing companies to benefit most from the findings since they are the ones taking the investment risks. Poorer nations say they should get a share of the benefits.

For Peggy Kalas, director of the High Seas Alliance, a network of organisations working to protect the high seas, one of the key questions is who will be responsible for taking management decisions in protected areas in the high seas.

“We cannot even predict or expect what will happen in the high seas in the future,” she said, citing a number of geoengineering activities and plans. “We want this agreement to be future-proof.”

“We would like the Conference of the Parties to take these decisions,” she told CHN, adding some countries preferred for sectoral authorities to be responsible for governance.

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Despite the number of issues left unresolved, Kalas said that if governments are able to advance their positions before the talks resume later this year, “this fourth meeting could be the final one”.

But the delay also means the re-scheduled meetings risks running into an already packed UN timetable on biodiversity this year.

This includes preparations for UN biodiversity talks in Kunming, China, in October when countries are due to agree on a global framework to protect the world’s plants and wildlife beyond 2020.

A number of countries have backed calls to protect at least 30% of the Earth’s lands and seas to halt the destruction of the planet’s biodiversity.

“The way to protect at least 30% of global oceans is by including the high seas,” Kalas said. “And to do that, you need this global ocean treaty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Power structures over gender make women more vulnerable to climate change

And the impact is being felt across the UN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The UN Biodiversity summit, due to take place in Kunming in October, is a critical moment for countries to agree on a global framework to halt the destruction of the planet’s plants and wildlife.

But the coronavirus outbreak has forced UN agencies to relocate preparatory talks due to take place next month in Kunming to the offices of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy.

The move came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern” because of the rapid spread of the virus. More than 200 people in China have died since the beginning of the epidemic and nearly 10,000 cases have now been reported.

Meanwhile, travel restrictions to and from China have intensified in recent days. On Thursday, the Italian government announced it was suspending all flights between Italy and China. Travel restrictions could make it more difficult for Chinese participants to attend the meeting.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said it was committed to ensure preparations for the October summit “proceed in a timely and effective manner”.

Spawning crisis

The desert locusts swarm in the Horn of Africa could provoke a humanitarian crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned.

The insects are ravaging the East African region in the worst outbreak in decades and is causing “an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” the UN agency has said.

Urgent calls for funding to stop the outbreak have been issued as the locusts have started laying eggs and the FAO fears new swarms could form in Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

Fuel blunder

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has come under pressure to regulate new shipping fuels introduced at the start of the year to reduce sulphur levels, which could be accelerating warming in the Arctic.

Research shows the new fuel blends could be causing a surge in black carbon emissions – a short-lived but potent pollutant that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to warming.

The fuels which were designed to improve air quality and protect human health could be increasing the shipping’s sector climate impact, especially in the Arctic region.

Now campaigners are asking tough questions about who knew what and when about the new fuels’ potential impacts on emissions. “It’s hard to see how experts in marine fuels like yourselves could not have been aware” of the risks, they said.

Carbon source

A new study found that indigenous and protected land in the Amazon emit far less carbon dioxide than the rest of the rainforest.

The study is the first to comprehensively include carbon losses from forest degradation (such as illegal logging and mining, floods and droughts), deforestation and forest growth and provides a detailed carbon account of the changing land use.

It prompted calls for greater support for indigenous land rights as a cost-effective way to limit climate change. Jocelyn Timperley reports.

Ratification

10 countries still haven’t ratified the Paris Agreement. Turkey and four large oil exporting countries, including Iran, Iraq, Angola and Libya, have not formally endorsed the agreement. Alister Doyle takes a look at who makes the list.

Quick hits

• UN relocates biodiversity talks to Italy from China after coronavirus emergency
• UN biodiversity meeting in China under review following coronavirus outbreak
• Locusts lay eggs as plague worsens in Horn of Africa, UN warns
• Indigenous lands, protected areas limit Amazon’s carbon emissions
• IMO under pressure to regulate new ship fuels over Arctic warming
• Which countries have not ratified the Paris climate agreement?

And in climate conversations

• UN ruling on climate refugees could be gamechanger for climate action

The post Coronavirus side effect – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was planned to take place in the southern city of Kunming, in Yunnan province, from 24-29 February. On Friday, the CBD changed the location of the talks to Rome, Italy, at the same dates as initially planned.

The announcement comes after the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a “public health emergency of international concern”.

The February talks are a preparatory meeting to the most important summit on the Earth’s living systems in a decade.

China is presiding over this year’s critical biodiversity summit, when countries are due to agree on a new global framework to protect plants and wildlife. The talks, known as Cop15, are due to take place in Kunming from 15-28 October.

CBD acting executive secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said the CBD secretariat recognised “the enormous efforts” being undertaken by China to control the outbreak and limit disruption.

In a letter to participants, she added that the Secretariat and China “regret the inconvenience caused by this change and are committed to ensuring that the development of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and other preparations (for Cop 15) proceed in a timely and effective manner.”

An earlier consultation scheduled to take place on 20-22 February is still due to take place in Kunming.

Indigenous lands, protected areas limit Amazon’s carbon emissions

Biodiversity campaigners and experts hope Cop15 will create a framework that can be to biodiversity protection what the Paris Agreement is for climate action.

In a draft proposal earlier this month, the UN suggested that at least 30% of the world’s land and seas should be protected by 2030 to halt the destruction of the planet’s biodiversity from human threats including climate change, loss of habitats, pollution and invasive species.

Negotiators taking part in the upcoming meeting are expected to review the draft and start making proposals for a second version or the text.

Charles Barber, a senior biodiversity advisor at the World Resources Institute think tank, told Climate Home News the February meeting would have been “a great chance” for China to “show leadership in the preparatory process” to Cop15.

Barber said the outbreak “must certainly distract  high level policy attention” from the meeting. “Assuming the virus is contained within the next month, it should not derail  China’s hosting of the Cop in October,” he said.

“Should it be proven that the coronavirus emanated from human consumption of animals from the wildlife market in Wuhan, we can expect the Cop to shine a much brighter light on the international wildlife trade, and China’s central role in that trade, as well as the whole ‘bushmeat’ issue worldwide,” he added.

UN biodiversity chief quits. Documents show she had been accused of misconduct

Last year, the CBD came under scrutiny by auditors from the UN’s Office of International Oversight Services (OIOS).  Former CBD head Cristiana Pașca Palmer resigned in October last year amidst allegations of mismanagement ahead of the key biodiversity summit.

CHN previously reported on documents that showed a chaotic work environment at the CBD secretariat, widespread staff illness and resignations and allegations that Pașca Palmer discriminated against African staff members on the basis of their race.

The OIOS audit report published on 31 October noted “staff felt that management was not taking their concerns seriously, and that this was affecting their morale and productivity”.

The report warned that “if these are not addressed, there could be a significant adverse impact on the secretariat’s ability to achieve its objectives and goals”.

From January 2017 to June 2019, the secretariat lost 21 senior and experienced staff – about a fifth of its workforce. A loss, the OIOS said “could have a negative impact on the secretariat’s capacity to undertake its substantive work”.

The report also noted the secretariat had requested nine new posts to be created “in anticipation of increased volume of work” ahead of Cop15. But the request was denied by countries which did not want to increase the CBD’s staffing budget for the year.

In total, 12 recommendations were made including strategic and finance management, human resources management and performance, which the CBD said was taking on board.

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