Note on the COP7 Decisions on Mechanisms Eligibility and Emissions Trading - 21 October 2001
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The Copenhagen agreement must be fair to all countries and must safeguard the climate, specifically it must include the following commitments
A commitment to keep warming well below 2°C
Industrialized countries as a group must take a target of more than 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.
Developing countries must be supported in their efforts to limit the growth of their industrial emissions, making substantial reductions below business-as-usual.
Emissions from deforestation and degradation must be reduced to zero by 2020, funded by at least US$35 billion per year from developed countries.
Developed countries need to provide at least US$195 billion in public financing per year by 2020, in addition to ODA commitments, for developing country actions:
Double counting must be avoided.
An Adaptation Action Framework that immediately and massively scales up predictable and reliable support to developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Copenhagen outcomes must be legally binding and enforceable:
Climate change is here, now, and is a matter of survival for humanity and ecology. Since the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, new science tells us that the impacts of climate change on the planet, people and nature are far more severe than even the findings of that report. Climate change impacts, such as sea level rise and unpredictable extreme weather events, are particularly devastating for developing countries who have contributed least to the problem, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Indeed Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDs) have called for “1.5 to stay alive” – making it clear that more than 1.5oC of warming would be catastrophic for their countries.
The new science also shows that with any delay in action the costs of mitigation and adaptation increase significantly. Delaying significant actions by even 5-10 years undermines our ability to stay well below 2°C and severely undermines the effectiveness of long-term adaptation action. Further, addressing climate change in an inadequate or unfair way may also cause severe challenges to poor and vulnerable communities. Efforts to address climate change must adequately reflect the right to sustainable development and also the principles of historical responsibility and common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities as enshrined in the Convention. Mindful of these principles all countries must play a part in the global effort, with developed countries taking the lead in combating climate change whilst economic and social development and poverty eradication remain legitimate priorities of developing countries.
Consequently, a Copenhagen agreement must be guided by the following principles:
Developed countries have a dual quantified obligation to reduce emissions at home and support developing countries with resources for adaptation and in their efforts to substantially deviate from business as usual emissions growth:
A set of Global Technology Objectives should be agreed upon that are ambitious enough to deliver on the physical emission paths needed, as well as adaptation needs, and that can guide the UNFCCC technology mechanism and national and international development towards low carbon and climate resilient economies.
A comprehensive framework for adaptation should be established that will massively scale up support for immediate to long-term adaptation actions in developing countries, including capacity building, planning and implementation of specific projects through to the full implementation of National Adaptation Action Strategies and Plans and the strengthening and expanding of regional centres. This framework should ensure especially vulnerable communities, populations, peoples and ecosystems are prioritised.
The Copenhagen agreement should include the goal to halt the destruction of natural forests and reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation to zero by 2020, through an international REDD-plus mechanism.
Institutions charged with implementing elements of the Copenhagen agreement shall be under the authority of, and fully accountable to the Conference of Parties (COP), and said institutions governance should be inclusive and participatory, including representation of vulnerable communities, populations, people, and civil society.
The most recent scientific studies and observations show that climate change is happening now and its impact on the planet, people and nature is increasingly severe. Even the most robust greenhouse gas reduction efforts will limit but not avoid dangerous climate change, which is already and increasingly exacerbating existing poverty, food insecurity, and ecosystems degradation. The current response from the international community for limiting global warming and providing resources to adapt to climatic impacts is wholly inadequate. Business as usual is not acceptable. The Copenhagen agreement must include a clear strategy for massively expanded collaborative action and commitment on adaptation from all countries, especially from Annex 1 countries to meet their historic obligations and to provide full financing and other resources to support adaptation.
One outcome from Copenhagen must be the provision of substantial finance for adaptation in developing countries. This must be at least US$50bn on average over the period 2013-2017, rising to at least US$100 billion per year by 2020, consistent with the latest available scientific and economic needs assessments. Funding should prioritise the most vulnerable countries and within them, the most vulnerable communities and peoples. All funding must be additional to existing Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) which are still required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. This new finance for adaptation must be from innovative sources, be predictable and be provided as grants and not loans.
A Copenhagen Adaptation Framework should:
To give a high probability of staying well below 2.0°C, and preventing the severe impacts of climate change at that level of warming, greenhouse gas emissions will ultimately have to reduce to 350ppm. Global emissions reductions must peak by around 2015 – within the 2013-2017 commitment period.
Mitigation : Developed Countries (annex 1)
The challenge now is to work together – cooperatively, effectively, urgently – to tackle climate change, while also recognizing the historic and current contributions of developed countries to climate change and its harmful effects. Developed and developing countries can and must play their part in preventing dangerous climate change in a way that reflects equity and their fair share of effort to ensure a safe and stable climate system.
Developed countries must adopt an aggregate reduction target of more than 40% by 2020 below 19905. National targets should be derived from the aggregate target using objective criteria to measure historic and present responsibility and capability. The calculations of national targets, ensuring that the mitigation effort is shared fairly amongst developed countries, should include all developed countries, including the United States which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
Developed countries must meet the large majority of their national emission reduction target domestically, with limited flexibility to meet them through offsets, or credits, from developing countries. A dual target system, delineating clearly between a country’s domestic and international mitigation commitments, can create a clearer, more robust and fairer system for international effort sharing. As long as developed country targets fall short of ensuring that domestic emissions are reduced by at least 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, there is no room – or indeed need – for offsets.
With appropriate design, social and environmental safeguards and with sufficiently ambitious developed countries’ reduction targets, offsets could play a role in a post 2012 agreement.
Any purchase of offsets from a developing country to meet a developed country’s target does not reduce the requirement of the developed country to contribute to funding a low carbon trajectory of developing countries – the two obligations of developed countries must be met independently.
Even under ambitious targets for industrialised countries, emissions reductions through offsets should not lead to double counting of emission reduction efforts by both developed and developing countries. Finance generated through carbon offset mechanisms must also not be double-counted against the obligation on developed countries to provide substantial, secure, predictable MRV public finance for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.
A robust and strengthened compliance mechanism, at least as strong as that in the Kyoto Protocol if not more robust, with an automatic early trigger, must ensure that developed countries meet their emissions reduction commitments and their finance and technology support obligations.
Land Use, Land use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) for developed countries
Accounting for emissions and removals from Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) must be based on what the atmosphere sees. For example:
There are many complexities and uncertainties associated with LULUCF and it is difficult to confidently predict the incentives and unintended consequences that may result from a particular set of accounting rules. LULUCF credits must not undermine or substitute for significant investments and efforts required to reduce fossil fuel emissions. This could be accomplished through strong rules and if necessary through the use of caps or higher national emission reduction targets or discounts of LULUCF credits.
Countries must commit to report on the achievement of goals and verifiable measures to protect reservoirs of greenhouse gases in natural forests, wetlands and grasslands, for example through the creation of protected areas.
Mitigation : Developing Countries
In order to ensure that the agreement reflects the diversity of developing countries there should be an equitable process to assess, encourage and enable mitigation actions in developing countries to be in line with their fair share of effort.
Using the support provided by developed countries, developing countries should design and put in place low carbon action plans to achieve their sustainable development objectives, while also achieving a low carbon economy. The development and implementation of these plans must be supported by financing, technology and capacity from developed countries to meet the full incremental costs of these actions.
The Copenhagen agreement should establish a UNFCCC climate facility/mechanism under the authority of the Conference of Parties, which will have a dual role of ensuring that developed countries meet their obligations to provide measurable, reportable and verifiable support for the enhanced actions of developing countries, and ensuring that developing countries undertake the implementation of the actions that have been provided support.
A binding agreement in the context of the UNFCCC facility/mechanism should quantify the deviation from business as usual emission trajectories to be achieved in developing countries as an outcome from and conditional on appropriate financial and technological support from developed countries.
Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States (LDCs and SIDS) should not be required to submit low carbon plans to receive support, but can submit individual NAMAs to the facility/mechanism for financial and technological support.
The level of mitigation action by developing countries that can be internationally measured, reported and verified will depend on the level of support by developed countries that is provided in a measurable, reportable and verifiable form under the full authority and guidance of the UNFCCC.
Developing countries should deliver national and sectoral monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries, except LDCs and SIDs, should be expected and enabled to develop these inventories by 2013, and on a two-year basis.
Any offsets against developed country targets must be in addition to the substantial deviation from BAU required from developing countries, which developed countries already have an obligation to support. And they must not include low-cost and no-regrets mitigation actions achieved autonomously by developing countries7.
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD)
Tropical deforestation and degradation8 – where the majority of deforestation takes place – account for about 15% of global emissions every year. As well as capturing carbon, natural forests provide both ecosystem services, (such as watershed protection and moderating extreme fluctuations in local climate) and livelihoods for millions of people. Combating deforestation can achieve both mitigation and adaptation benefits as well as sustainable development.
The Copenhagen agreement should include the goal to halt the destruction of natural forests and reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation to zero by 2020.
In so doing the international REDD-plus mechanism must:
International Aviation & Shipping (bunker fuels)
Emissions from international aviation and shipping must be covered by a Copenhagen agreement in order to ensure a comprehensive mitigation response. The sectors currently account for nearly 10% of anthropogenic warming and their share is forecast to rise rapidly unless they are controlled.
Countries are unable to agree a methodology for allocating emissions to individual countries, and therefore the most promising method for including these emissions is to pursue a co-operative sectoral approach, with countries collaborating to reduce emissions that occur in international space.
The Copenhagen agreement should specify a number of elements to ensure that such policies can be rapidly developed and implemented, on an equitable basis that minimises negative impacts on the most vulnerable countries:
Clean Development Mechanism (cdm)
In the second commitment period, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) requires fundamental restructuring or replacement, and should not continue or be expanded without fundamental reform. The CDM must create a more reliable means for filtering out projects that are non-additional and those that have adverse social and environmental impacts.
Negotiations towards a Copenhagen agreement hinge on a number of key elements, including ensuring that sufficient financial assistance will be available in the short and long term to support developing country actions to deal with climate change. Without substantial and upfront commitments of financial resources from developed countries in the near and long term there is an increased likelihood of continued stalemate in the negotiations, and substantially raising the extent of damage and the costs of climate change in the future.
All public finance must be new and additional to existing Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments which will be required in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
To effectively support and enhance developing countries’ efforts on adaptation and mitigation, developed countries will need to mobilize significant public funding for developing country actions—at least US$195 billion per year by 2020. This figure is based on conservative estimates of the minimum resources required to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries:
There is a need for near term financing to be provided, starting immediately up until the new agreement is able to provide a steady stream of finance.
Any offsetting of developed country targets, by buying credits from developing countries, must be paid for over and above the financing listed above. The financing support above will support the substantial deviation from business as usual necessary in developing countries if we are to keep warming well below 2oC, to complement developed countries independent emissions reductions of more than 40% below 1990 levels by 20209. Creative “double accounting” means developed countries are not meeting their dual obligations, and threatening the environmental integrity of the climate regime and the change of keeping warming well below 2 degrees.
Developing countries must have the confidence that the funding will be delivered if they are to play their part in keeping warming well below 2 degrees. Repeating the unsatisfactory lack of delivery of voluntary aid commitments is unacceptable. Rich countries must ensure predictable, automatic and innovative revenue streams, enabling the polluter pays principle, and additional to existing Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments. Revenue streams, amongst other things, could include:
To ensure accountability, coherence and transparency, the vast majority of public climate funding must flow through a consolidated fund under the authority of and fully accountable to the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP) and COP decision-making. Political oversight by the COP on fund policies and safeguards is essential to effective accountability and political acceptance. Likewise, institutional governance should be inclusive and participatory, including representation of vulnerable communities, populations, people, and civil society, and the full and effective participation of vulnerable populations and people. Governance of institutional arrangements should also protect rights, prioritize the most vulnerable populations, and observe environmental and social safeguards; and must follow the principle of subsidiarity (matters should be handled by bodies at the most local level that show relevant competency). Country ownership should maximise national, sub-national and community level ownership in order to enable and guarantee participatory local-level planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and facilitate overall effectiveness.
To keep the global average temperature increases as far below 2°C as possible and to support vulnerable countries in adapting to the impacts of climate change, we truly need a worldwide revolution in research, development and rapid diffusion of environmentally-sustainable technologies (EST), particularly renewable energy and energy efficiency. We need drastic action and global cooperation all along the technology chain targeted at: the direction and financing
of national and cross-border research and development; the speed of technology demonstration and deployment; the scope and extent of technology diffusion; and the directness, affordability and ease of accessibility to technology products, skills and know-how.
This will require a transfer of resources, (information, skills, know-how, financing, goods, and equipment, etc.) in particular from developed to developing countries, all along the technology chain, while supporting the creation of conditions in all countries that enable environmentally sustainable technologies to flourish.
This will require significant amounts of public funds, channelled directly to support technology objectives and programmes as well the use of public funds to leverage private sector investment and participation in technology programmes and joint ventures.
Copenhagen must establish a dedicated Technology Cooperation Mechanism under the authority of the COP or COP/MOP that would:
The Kyoto Protocol established a system whereby developed (Annex 1) countries commit to take legally binding emission reduction targets and to be subject to an international compliance regime. Until the international community agrees to a system that provides better environmental outcomes, a stronger compliance mechanism and has widespread support, the Kyoto Protocol should continue with a second commitment period.
The US has suggested that countries put forward their actions in an Annex, where countries would unilaterally pledge to undertake targets or actions and would self adjust to ensure that the commitments are fair and ambitious. Parties would present their actions to the COP periodically for peer review. There would be no independent body determining whether countries are in compliance, and there would be no penalties for inaction. It’s hard to imagine that a system with no compliance would ensure that countries would do what they promised to do, so it is hard to believe that this system will result in warming staying well below 2oC. This is therefore a completely unacceptable proposal.
The Australian Government has proposed a system of individual country schedules, which could incorporate the targets of the Kyoto Protocol for developed (Annex 1) countries and act as a register of actions for all countries. This proposal risks leading to de facto bottom up, pledge and review approach, rather than starting from a global aggregate target for emission reductions to ensure that sufficient action is taken to keep warming well below 2oC.
Copenhagen must ensure that all developed (Annex 1) countries take on both legally binding emission reduction targets and commitments to provide adequate, additional and predictable finance and technology support, backed by a compliance regime at least as strong as that in the Kyoto Protocol, if not more robust, by including an automatic early trigger and stronger penalties for non compliance. At this stage that means a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and a complementary agreement under the UNFCCC to ensure that the United States commits to effort comparable to other developed countries, calculated using historical and current responsibility and capability.
The second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and the complementary agreement, must encompass all of the elements listed in this document as essential to being agreed at Copenhagen in order to produce a legally binding, enforceable and ratifiable outcome. The outcome of negotiations under the Convention14, or LCA track, regardless of form, must provide a strong basis to rapidly enhance implementation of the Convention, including full implementation of financial obligations of developed countries. The legal form and nature of the LCA track outcome must be in full respect of equity principles including “common but differentiated responsibilities”.
The core legal architecture elements of an agreement at Copenhagen must be:
Legal
Considerations Regarding National Schedules for Climate Change Mitigation – June 2009
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting-and-date/bonn.... pdf/view
Adaptation
Submission to UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Regarding An Adaptation Action Framework – April 2009
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/smsn/ngo/128.pdf
Views Regarding Adaptation Under the LCA Submission - 30 September, 2008
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting-and-date/cop-...
Action on Adaptation: The Scale of yhe Challenge and Required Responses – June 2008
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting-and-date/bonn...
CAN Adaptation and Ecosystems Position and Briefing Paper - May 2009
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-topic/CAN%20adaptatio...
Finance
Principles for Climate Finance under the UNFCCC – September 2009
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting- and-date/bangkok-sept-oct-2009/CAN_Principles_of_ Financial_mechanism_september09.pdf
CAN Finance Position Paper Scale and Sources of Support for Developing Country Adaptation, Mitigation and Capacity Building
http://and-date/bonn-ii-june-2009/CANfinance_position-scale_and_climaten...