High Five for Five-Year Commitment Periods
6 December 2014
ECO is delighted to announce that the ADP draft decision text now contains the option for a proposed amendment for paragraph 9, which would read: “decides that all parties shall communicate a nationally determined mitigation contribution for 2025″.
This is exactly what ECO has been calling for, and the Marshall Islands was awarded the Ray of the Day yesterday for having tabled this text. ECO now urges all Parties to communicate their support for the proposal and affirm that they shall communicate an INDC for 2025.
AILAC also was positive in proposing a 2025 date, but with an indicative 2030 one alongside, as in Brazil’s proposal. ECO strongly welcomes their support for five-year commitment periods, and their concern to ensure that mitigation commitments are not locked in for the next 16 years, as sole 2030 commitments would do. However, there are concerns that once governments set a target, even if an ‘indicative’ one, it will become locked into the national psyche as the de facto actual target.
The 2°C temperature limit, for example, was an EU position going into the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and is based on IPCC Second Assessment Review science. Despite the science demanding ever more ambition, the EU has not shifted their position in nearly twenty years.
Politics mean that once a number has been put forward it can be very difficult to change. A fresh conversation each time you need to set new targets is needed to avoid this political and psychological lock-in.