CAN Intervention, Informal Stocktaking Plenary, COP26

Five years after Paris, COP26 is the opportunity to prove that you are serious about preventing a deepening of the climate crisis. Instead of doing what is needed, your draft decisions do not provide justice or offer support to the millions already facing loss and damage due to climate change, nor do they keep 1.5 degrees in sight to avert future worsening impacts.

Let us be clear, limiting dangerous warming to 1.5 degrees requires all fossil fuels to be phased out, with the support of finance and equity that is not only coal, but also oil and gas. This COP must finally decide to do so. It also requires urgently halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity.

Equity and balance across items are absent from the current text and prevent a more progressive outcome because rich countries are afraid of it. Some specific examples: One, suggesting to delete the mitigation section is[obnoxious and a punch in the face of people suffering from the climate crisis in your own countries. Two, there is no alternative to agreeing on a new submission date for NDCs before 2023 given the massive shortfall even after the latest round of updates running up to this COP.

Three, for Article 6, [we cannot actually believe we have to make the following remarks]: Human Rights and Indigenous Rights are non-negotiable and must be in the text and an independent grievance mechanism must be made a prerequisite. It is ridiculous that double counting emissions is even an option in these talks. The same goes for the carryover of junk credits to cheat on accounting towards your climate goals that do not as agreed in the PA raise collective climate ambition, on the contrary

Negotiation on this inadequate basis does not bring justice to people and the planet, nor does it adequately and fully implement what you have legally committed to delivering.