We’ve Got More Questions

25 June 2019

ECO is excited to see so many Annex I Parties participating in the multilateral assessment for their biennial reports. ECO congratulates Parties for participating and thinks the multilateral assessment can be a great place to share experiences and lessons learned with other Parties in a constructive environment. We look forward to hearing your presentations and Q&A sessions throughout the day. 
Since ECO can’t ask questions during these workshops, we figured we’d share our questions with you here:
To all Parties:
Can you provide an update regarding any action taken to strengthen policy-making processes €” in particular public access to information and public participation €” so as to improve climate responses and promote policy coherence in the context of progress made towards meeting your commitments under the UNFCCC?
To Norway:
Norway has a national goal to cut emissions 30% by 2020, and two thirds of these cuts should be done domestically. But in 2017, according to the Government’s Prop 1.S 2018-19, Norwegian emissions had risen 2.4% since 1990. What is Norway’s strategy to deal with this?
To the Russian Federation:
According to its own last national inventory report in 2017, Russian GHG emissions were 68% of 1990 level without accounting for LULUCF, and 51% with the given accounting. These levels were stable in the last 10 years (with minor annual variations). Then why does Russia have an INDC with almost 1.5 times that growth of emissions in the next 10 years (incl. LULUCF, from 51% in 2017 to 70-75% of 1990 by 2030)? Russia has quite ambitious plans to modernize 41GW of power plants by 2031, to decrease energy intensity of GDP by about 50% by 2030, to do tree planting on all new clear-cut timber harvesting lots. How can a country with such plans “ensure” fast GHG net-emissions growth by 50%?
To the United Kingdom:
What is the status of the UK’s consideration of whether to count ‘surplus” carbon emissions towards future targets? We understand that 88Mt CO2e might be counted towards the UK’s 2018-2022 carbon budget, against the advice of the independent advisory Climate Change Committee, which warned that it would “undermine the integrity of the framework for emissions reductions”. This rollover of Kyoto credits would actually allow UK emissions to INCREASE during this current carbon budget.