Negotiations Briefing Update: Cancún Climate Talks
[Cancún, Mexico] Climate Action Network will host a media briefing to assess progress in the UNFCCC climate negotiations underway in Cancún, Mexico, on Wednesday, December 8, at 11:00 AM local (17:00 GMT), in Room Luna of the Azteca building of the Moon Palace.
NGO experts on the panel will include Tara Rao, WWF International; David Waskow, Oxfam America; and Aida Vila Rovira, Greenpeace Spain.
What: Briefing update on the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Cancún
Where: UNFCCC Press Conference Room Luna,Moon Palace, Cancún
Webcast Live: http://webcast.cc2010.mx/ (www.unfccc.int)
When: 11:00 AM local (17:00 GMT), Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Who: NGO experts on UNFCCC negotiations
Climate Action Network (CAN) is a global network of over 550 non-governmental organizations working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. For more information go to: www.climatenetwork.org .
For more information contact:
Hunter Cutting: +52 (1) 998-108-1313
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Negotiations Briefing Update: Cancún Climate Talks
Assessing progress on the Kyoto Protocol, the Climate Fund, and MRV
[Cancún, Mexico] Climate Action Network will host a media briefing to assess progress in the UNFCCC climate negotiations underway in Cancún, Mexico, on Tuesday, December 7, at 10:30 AM local (16:30 GMT), in Room Luna of the Azteca building of the Moon Palace.
NGO experts on the panel will include Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists; Ailun Yang, Greenpeace China; and Raman Mehta, Climate Action Network South Asia.
What: Briefing update on the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Cancún
Where: UNFCCC Press Conference Room Luna,Moon Palace, Cancún
Webcast Live: http://webcast.cc2010.mx/ (www.unfccc.int)
When: 10:30 AM local (16:30 GMT), Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Who: NGO experts on UNFCCC negotiations
Climate Action Network (CAN) is a global network of over 550 non-governmental organizations working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. For more information go to: www.climatenetwork.org.
For more information contact:
Hunter Cutting: +52(1) 998-108-1313
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Over 200 civil society organisations today launch a call for a fair climate fund to be established this week in Cancun.
As ministers arrive to face the vital political challenges around the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, sufficient political time and energy must be spared to ensure substantive outcomes on issues that really matter to those suffering from climate change’s savage
impacts.
As the Civil Society Call makes clear, poor people are losing out twice. They are being hardest hit by a crisis they did least to cause, but the are not being served by climate-related funds that should be helping them.
Most existing funds have benefited just a handful of developing countries, privileging mitigation over adaptation, and offering little scope for the meaningful participation of affected communities, especially women.
There is an urgent need to establish a new fair global climate fund to help developing countries build resilience to the impacts of climate change, protect their forests, and adopt low-carbon development pathways. Public finance is vital to meet these needs, while carbon markets are proving inadequate or inappropriate. To be truly equitable and effective, the new fund must mark a clear shift in the management of global flows of climate finance that delivers for poor people.
Ministers arriving this week must do more than just start a process to establish a new fund – they must take political decisions on the nature of that fund. At a minimum, they must ensure a fund which is:
The establishment of a fair global climate fund is long overdue. Ministers, don’t waste this opportunity to chart mark a new course for global finance governance that puts poor people at its heart.
We are starting the crucial final week. Ministers are being briefed, crucial new texts are being minutely analyzed and insect bites are spreading. With so many difficult, complex and itchy matters competing for attention, it might be easy to overlook one fact. We have only two years to get climate finance flowing at scale before fast start finance expires in 2013. But there’s good news: a variety of innovative sources of climate finance are right at our fingertips.
This week, Parties should create a robust process to discuss sources of long-term finance, with a clear work plan and outcomes that can deliver concrete decisions by COP 17. These steps will address where the financing will come from, and acknowledge that meeting mitigation and adaptation objectives means scaling up finance substantially over the long term
The new LCA text usefully calls for a look at needs and options for mobilizing long term finance. But in the absence of a work plan and outputs, negotiators will face another year of wrangling over how to move forward.
Sources of financing is a political issue, not a technical one, and it must be discussed in the LCA, not pushed off into the SBI or a body focused on designing a new fund.
The issue was held in abeyance this past year while the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Group on Climate Finance (AGF) did its work. The AGF has now released the findings of 9 months of study. While ECO was disappointed that private finance and carbon markets are spotlighted, and multilateral development banks are inappropriately considered sources instead of channels of finance, this constitutes an impressive body of work including workstream papers that can serve as a useful starting point for the coming focus on ways to mobilize public finance.
One source is government budgets from developed countries. This will continue to be an important source of international climate finance, and a scale for assessed contributions will be an important output of the process.
But to scale up public finance to the necessary scale, rising rapidly from fast-start levels, other innovative sources will be required. Mechanisms to address emissions from international shipping and aviation fit that bill.
The AGF has endorsed a mechanism to solve the equity question under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities raised about this mechanism. The AGF proposal involves using a rebate to ensure that developing countries are not subject to any net incidence or burden from global measures to address emissions in these sectors.
In the shipping sector this rebate would be based on the share of global imports attributed to each country. Other options are discussed for the aviation sector. Developing countries will be entitled to the rebate, while the share of revenue attributed to developed countries would be administered under the UNFCCC and be used for adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries.
Text introduced by Chile should supplement the Chair’s LCA text on aviation and maritime transport. However, a process for committing to public finance options must go beyond the AGF report to include new submissions, workshops and a clear workplan to get to decisions by South Africa on specific sources.
If we can break the longstanding deadlock in addressing emissions in this crucial and grow, negotiators and Ministers can claim an important success here in Cancun. And all those mosquito bites can be a badge of honor.
Economies are stressed and lending rates are high. Here at COP 16 it is the negotiators who are stressed and their blood pressures run high as they struggle to close the gaping wound that is the Gigatonne Gap. But fortunately, there are doctors in the house, and their climate checkup tells us about the benefits of addressing our emissions addictions.
We would all agree that exercise is beneficial to health. The changes in transport policy and the decrease in sedentism required to meet our GHG emissions targets can save lives, says leading medical journal The
Lancet.
For example, heart artery disease can fall by 20%, breast cancer by 12% and even dementia by 8%. And rates of respiratory disease (such as asthma) fall as pollution levels decline -- a benefit also seen where clean cooking technologies replace primitive stoves in developing regions. Rates of heart illness fall, as do those of osteoporosis (bone thinning), diabetes, obesity and depression. Appropriate trimming of animal meat and fat consumption also reduces heart disease rates by 15%, and would reduce rates of bowel cancer. The Lancet showed that such gains applied worldwide, including the UK, India, and China.
With a healthier, more productive workforce, output will improve and healthcare costs will fall. These data should encourage the EU, for one, to stretch for more ambition, and aim for at least a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Upping the target from 20% will save an additional 30 billion Euros each year in healthcare costs -- nearly two-thirds of the annual 46 billion Euro cost of such a change estimated by the European Commission. Put another way, as much as two-thirds of mitigation costs might be offset by healthcare savings.
And here’s an example closer to our temporary home here in Cancun. Even a 10% fall in small particle pollution in Mexico City would save US $760 million a year.
On Thursday, a meeting in the US Pavilion emphasised the dire human health impact of climate change. Human suffering is the loose change paying the price of climate change. Ambitious mitigation targets can prevent that, and save lives and money as well. Let’s take the prescription, show ambition, and heal that Gigatonne Gap. And make nations healthier, happier and richer while we are at it.
Monday 6 December will be “Health Day” in Cancun. Watch for a statement for delegates supported by leading global medical and health groups.
Climate Change is about survival as well as the right to development. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, people are facing compounded loss of biodiversity, food insecurity, water shortages, extreme weather conditions, increase in sea level…just to mention a few examples.
The coastal villages in Ghana, the communities living along the bank of the Volta River, dammed at Akosombo are now refuges in their own country. The young kids have to walk several miles searching for water and the list continues…
Here in Cancún, governments will have to go beyond the “business as usual” approach and focus on addressing the root causes of GHG emissions in order to set forward a bold pathway to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding outcome to save mother Earth and allow all the people, particularly children, women and youth to live a life worth living.
The key challenge in Cancún is to continue the process of constructing a strong foundation for a meaningful long term-global action.
Climate sustainability addresses poverty, inequality and environmental degradation through relevant strategies for mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology sharing.
Governments must demonstrate political will and embrace the two track approach: the Convention & Kyoto Protocol for a successful CANCUN outcome. Major long term achievements are needed. CANCUN should be the place where those responsible for climate change commit to reduce greenhouse gases to ensure a sustainable future.
Samuel Dotse
Southern Capacity Building Program Fellow
The Leadership Development Program (LDP) is one of CAN’s cornerstone programs that aims to strengthen its national and regional nodes and build professional leadership within the network....
