From Paris to Katowice: a slow progressive Talanoa Dialogue for Climate Ambition

If Paris was historic in carving a global climate deal, Katowice will define the political urgency for climate action.

Negotiations at the just ended United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, focused on the Paris Agreement Work Programme, under which countries are designing the guidelines that will move the climate pact from concepts to actions.

The Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, at the concluding session, expressed concern at the lack of urgency in moving the negotiations forward.

“It is time to look at the bigger picture, see the severe impacts that climate change is having across the world, and rise to the challenge,” said Group Chair, Gebru Jember Endalew.

He expects steady progress be made throughout 2018 on all issues so that poor and vulnerable countries can engage effectively.

“A last-minute rush at COP24 risks leaving developing countries behind,” he said.

The Paris Rulebook

The Rulebook spells guidelines on how to put the Paris Agreement into practice.

There is a call for a fair, robust and transparent Rulebook that inspires confidence among countries to step up and commit to enhanced national climate targets by 2020.

They are essential for determining whether total world emissions are declining fast enough to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. These include boosting adaptation and limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

“I am satisfied that some progress was made here in Bonn. But many voices are underlining the urgency of advancing more rapidly on finalizing the operational guidelines. The package being negotiated is highly technical and complex. We need to put it in place so that the world can monitor progress on climate action,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change.

Progress on Agriculture

Recognizing the urgency of addressing interests in the agriculture sector, the Bonn conference made a significant advance on the “Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture” by adopting a roadmap for the next two-and-a-half years.

Farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as prolonged droughts and shifting rainfall patterns, and agriculture is an important source of emissions.  

This roadmap responds to the world’s farming community of more than 1 billion people and to the 800 million people who live in food-insecure circumstances, mainly in developing countries. It addresses a range of issues including the socio-economic and food-security dimensions of climate change, assessments of adaptation in agriculture, co-benefits and resilience, and livestock management.

But not with Finance…

Without advances in the talks over the commitment of future financial support from rich countries to developing nations, who are already facing devastating climate impacts, it became difficult for other areas of the negotiations to progress.

LDC Group Chair, Gebru Jember Endalew, stated “Finance is key to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. In the face of climate change, poor and vulnerable countries are forced to address loss and damage and adapt to a changing climate, all while striving to lift their people out of poverty without repeating the mistakes of an economy built on fossil fuels. This is not possible without predictable and sustainable support."

Civil society also expressed some dissatisfaction with the finance dialogue.

“The radio silence on money has sown fears among poor countries that their wealthier counterparts are not serious about honouring their promises. This funding is not just a bargaining chip, it is essential for delivering the national plans that make up the Paris Agreement,” said Mohamed Adow, International Climate Lead, Christian Aid. “For the Paris Agreement to be a success we need the Katowice COP to be a success. And for the Katowice COP to be a success we need assurances that sources of funding will be coming.”

The Talanoa Dialogue

The Fijian Presidency of COP23 launched the Talanoa Dialogue to spur an outcome for enhanced ambition at the end of this year at COP24.

The first global conversation about efforts to combat climate change was witnessed on Sunday, May 6, at the 2018 Bonn Climate Talks.

The dialogue wrote history when countries and non-Party stakeholders including cities, businesses, investors and regions engaged in interactive story-telling for the first time.

The dialogue witnessed some 250 participants sharing more than 700 stories of climate struggle and inspiration, providing fresh ideas and renewed determination to raise ambition.

Seven groups, known as “Talanoas”, took part in the informal Talanoa tradition of sharing stories to find solutions for the common good. Participants discussed three central questions: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?

The Dialogue has the goal of taking stock of collective efforts towards progress on the Paris Agreement’s long-term mitigation goal. It will also inform the preparation of parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the second round of which are expected in 2020.

“Now is the time for action. Now is the time to commit to making the decisions the world must make. We must complete the implementation guidelines of the Paris Agreement on time. And we must ensure that the Talanoa Dialogue leads to more ambition in our climate action plans,” said Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji and President of COP23.

Talanoa inspires discussion between countries not as negotiating blocs but as one of people to people. But it is important that this is translated into a clear political process.

The Polish Presidency must take up the baton from the Fiji Presidency and work with all countries towards a political outcome for stronger national targets by 2020.

Political Action in Katowice

All input received to date and up to 29 October 2018 will feed into the Talanoa Dialogue’s second but more political phase at COP24.

To be meaningful, the Talanoa Dialogue “must deliver concrete outcomes that drive an increase in ambition and support to put us on track to achieving the 1.5 degree temperature goal set in Paris, guided by equity and science," said Mr. Endalew.

Talks resume in Bangkok from September 3-8 where negotiators will pick up “informal notes” forwarded by this session. They will attempt to turn these notes and various inputs from countries into the basis for a negotiating text ahead of COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

“The science is clear: we need to get into higher gear to reach Paris goals and we need to have the courage to go beyond traditional politics. Meeting in the middle is no option this time,” said Marcel Beukeboom, Climate Envoy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

A stronger political leadership remains critical to achieve the major milestones envisaged for COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

The UN Climate Change talks are an integral part of a broader, worldwide debate on climate change.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.

“The time for stories has long since passed,” said Meena Raman of Third World Network. “We live in a world with over 1℃ warming and the devastation is already severe. We cannot allow for that warming to go beyond 1.5℃ and we need a political process to prevent that.”

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

Taking climate action has investment opportunities for Africans

Citizens of Africa have been urged to take advantage of investment opportunities that accompany climate action to earn some money and lift their people from poverty.

Secretary-General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Mithika Mwenda, has noted that the renewable energy revolution currently being witnessed in the world provides affordable access to energy to people who would otherwise not have access.

He noted that renewable energy has also aided in the reduction of emissions, thus contributing to the attainment of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions of countries.

“We are witnessing renewable energy revolution and in Africa and the rest of the world, this is an explosive sector,” observed Mithika. “We need to take advantage of the investment opportunities coming with climate action; there are a lot of resources in this to help address poverty”.

At the COP21 climate talks which produced the Paris Agreement, the G7 committed to allocate US$10 billion into the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI).

Though there are concerns with delivering the promise, the Initiative, in its current design, will help cure chronic energy poverty by supporting decentralized, modern, off-grid and people-owned energy systems not only for lighting, but also cooking, driving smallholder agribusiness and charging mobile phones.

Mithika added that green energy has helped save lives by reducing indoor pollution.

Fossil fuel vs. renewable energy economies

Mithika Mwenda was addressing an event on low-carbon and climate-resilient development, held on the sidelines of the 2018 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Most African countries do not contribute any significant amount of greenhouse gases but there are commitments in their NDCs to ensure that their development pathways are carbon neutral.

In a climate-constrained world, investment in fossil fuel-based energy sources no longer makes sense.

But Africa faces the dilemma of whether to rapidly revert to renewable energy, have a mix of both fossil fuels and renewables, or ignore the global call and continue in the unsustainable model of development pursued by industrialized countries which brought the climate crisis.

What is evident, though, is the fact that the global community has shifted.

This shift should make African countries re-think their priority energy sources and investment in oil and in some instances coal, as it may not make economic sense in the long-run.

The Addis Ababa side-event, attended by climate actors from across the continent, is organized strategically to get African leaders to focus attention on climate change issues.

As the first Pan African convention after the COP23, the event offered an opportunity to exchange ideas and reflect on Africa’s victories during the Bonn Climate Change Conference, with a view of charting a collective path towards subsequent Global Dialogue processes on the subject.

“This gives us the platform to develop common African narratives that will have impact on the global stage,” said James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Moving along the development pathway

Climate change is no longer discussed as a limited environmental or scientific matter but as a development issue.

African civil society therefore looks forward to leaders moving from the rhetoric to taking real action on the ground.

“The momentum for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the NDCs is picking up, but the question is: are we moving with that pace in Africa?” queried Mithika.

Some countries on the continent have developed very effective policy and legal frameworks to facilitate the implementation in the areas of transparency, adaptation, loss and damage, among others.

But there are others stuck on bureaucracies to push the climate agenda forward.

“We need to think broader about what is the impact of climate change on development. What does it mean for agriculture? What does it mean for energy, for infrastructure? So we are really talking about development,” said Mithika.

He believes that the ClimDev-Africa programme can rally the African continent around in mobilizing action and “we need to ensure that critical centres that support the livelihoods of the African people and which are weather sensitive like agriculture are created”.

The Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme is an initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), established to create a solid foundation for Africa’s response to climate change.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

African countries not dependent on donor support for climate adaptation - study

African countries are already spending up to 20 percent of their total needs presently on climate adaptation, which is more than their fair share without any support from the international community, a new study by the United Nations has revealed.
 

Early findings from the study jointly commissioned by the UNDP Regional Office for Africa, and the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to review African commitment to adaptation has therefore dismissed the insinuation that African countries are not investing in their own climate adaptation responses and are instead waiting on the international community as recipients of support.

“African countries are already spending between 2 to 9 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on adaptation, thus reducing the potential impact of climate change by more than 20 percent,” Dr Johnson Nkem, a Senior Climate Adaptation expert at the ACPC told PAMACC News at the ongoing climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany.

The UN study is being implemented by two United Kingdom centres; Climate Scrutiny and Mokoro, to provide estimates of Africa’s public expenditure on adaptation as a proportion of the total cost for adaptation.

Although the level of investment as a proportion of GDP expenditure varies among countries, it ranges between 2-9 percent of GDP; and represents more than other forms of expenditure in public services such as healthcare and education.

“This contribution is significantly higher than the adaptation resource flow from international sources,” said Nkem.

The study therefore recommends that the disproportionate share of investment in adaptation as opposed to its smallest share of contribution to the global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, needs to be fully recognised and boosted under global financing mechanism for climate response, especially under the implementation of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Some of the study’s key findings are that, African countries are already making a major contribution to adaptation that constitutes; that for Africa as a whole, the estimated adaptation gap is about 80 percent; and that the adaptation gap is greater than 90% in nine countries. Most of these countries face major exposure and sensitivity to climate change risks as well as fiscal challenges.

Countries that have reduced the potential impact of climate change by more than 20 percent, include those with low climate change risks like Liberia, Namibia and Zimbabwe; high expenditure, for example Ethiopia, Gambia, Zambia; and lower risk and good expenditure countries like Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda.

The objectives of the Review of African Commitment to Adaptation was to provide some initial estimates of the current spending on adaptation by African governments, and to assess the extent to which this funding meets the scale of the adaptation challenge as determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other assessments.

According to Nkem Ndi, there is a growing political will and socio-economic motivation in addressing climate change in Africa’s development agenda as demonstrated by the level of public expenditure on adaptation to climate change in the continent.

He pointed out that most adaptation expenditure in Africa is primarily linked to development expenditure that provides good benefits with current climate conditions.

Estimates of the adaptation expenditure were provided by classifying the most recent public finance data, preferably actual expenditure data rather than budget data, if it is available.

Actual data for 10 countries, and data obtained from the internet for additional 24 countries were used for the analyses in this study. The entire analyses in the study does not include expenditure by development partners that is outside the budget.

The study notes that despite its miniscule share of responsibility for the causes of climate change, Africa has always been labelled as a tenuous recipient of development assistance, with unending expectations of support in addressing climate impacts on its development.

While this stigma is baseless, it remains to be fully disbarred using empirical studies demonstrating regional investments for climate adaptation by the countries.

@PAMACC News

COP 23: What is at stake for Africa?

Delegates from about 196 countries have gathered in Bonn, Germany for what has become a semblance of a yearly ritual – the 23rd conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The conference holds from the 6 -17 November 2017 in Bonn under the leadership of Fiji which is the first small island developing state to hold this role.

The COP is coming at a time extreme weather events like floods, hurricanes and fires have destabilized millions of people in Africa Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean. COP 23 therefore aspires to propel the world towards the next level of ambition needed to tackle global warming and put the world on a safer and more prosperous development path.

Africa and the COP Process

At the beginning of COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco, November 2016, the Paris Agreement era had been ushered in. Countries of the world had demonstrated commitment and the Agreement had come into force faster than anticipated. Due to this reality, COP 22 then focused on how to make Paris agreement work by setting up mechanisms and structures that would facilitate its implementation.

A year later and with over 33 African countries ratifying the Paris Agreement, Africans are heading to Bonn with a bag full of expectations for the continent and the world.

As the region with least contribution to green house gas emissions and the most affected in terms of climate disasters, African delegates are not happy with the failure of the COP process to close the finance gap; inadequacy in pledges; delay in addressing ‘orphan issues’ under the Paris Agreement especially common time-frames for NDCs, and adjustment of existing NDCs. Others are recognition of developing countries’ adaptation efforts; guidance related to finance; and the slow pace and ambiguity in sequencing of work on the Paris Agreement Rule Book thus creating roadblocks in advancing the its formulation.

African demands

Prof Seth Osafo of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) believes that the slow progress by developed country parties towards reaching the US$100 billion goal of joint annual mobilisation by 2020 is not in Africa’s interest. Speaking at the African civil society Pre-COP workshop in Bonn, Prof Osafo said Africa’s interest lies in developed countries providing financial support to developing countries and positioning the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB) to provide support to developing countries in finance, technology and capacity building.

At the Pre-COP workshop organised by African civil society actors including farmers, pastoralists, youth and gender groups under the umbrella of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), non-state actors from the region expressed their desire for loss and damage concerns to be fully taken into consideration as the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) shifts to serve the Paris Agreement after 2020.

According to Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of the alliance, parties should establish a globally supported insurance mechanism (especially for agriculture and infrastructure sectors) in line with the objectives of the WIM for Loss & Damage by 2020. “We call on Parties to establish a framework, preferably outside but complimentary to UNFCCC, for addressing liability or compensation due to losses and damages in developing countries by extreme weather events and severe impacts of climate change” he added.

Pre-2020 commitments

Heading into the 23rd session of the Conference of Parties this year, one of the issues that have emerged as key expectation for African Parties to this year’s climate talks is progress on pre-2020 commitments.

African groups want COP23 to provide an opportunity for rich countries to revisit their commitment to undertake pre-2020 actions. The deliverables could be the concrete progress or signal with regards to the ratification of the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) to enable the entry into force of the second commitment period (for emissions reductions by developed countries under the KP) and the operationalisation of the US$100b per year from 2020 and other resources for developing countries.

The implementation of pre-2020 commitments which cover actions to be taken before the Paris Agreement comes into force are of high importance to safeguard the future of the climate.

Rule Book for Paris Agreement

Another issue of urgent African importance at this COP is progress on the work programme to implement the Paris Agreement. Negotiations on the Paris Rule Book will be critical to ensuring that the promises made in the Paris Agreement are met. Some of these promises include the commitment of governments to respect, protect and take into consideration existing human rights obligations.

To enhance the likelihood that the Paris Agreement is effectively implemented, when developing the Paris Rule Book, parties are expected to integrate human rights and the social and environmental principles reaffirmed in the agreement’s preamble, including the rights of indigenous peoples, public participation, gender equality, safeguarding food security and ending hunger, a just transition, and ecosystem integrity.

Facilitative Dialogue 2018

According to the agreement reached in Paris, a facilitative dialogue (FD 2018) is to be convened to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

The Facilitative Dialogue is expected to ensure the linkage between policies, actions and means of implementation. It will also be instrumental to maintaining the political momentum of the Paris Agreement and its long-term goal and the need to be informed by what science indicates as necessary for climate actions and ambition for next 15 years.

The design of the dialogue as an overall feature together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5°C, the work of the climate champions and work of non-state actors, are critical for this purpose.

#PAMACC News Agency

UN Secretary-General maps out plans for accelerating climate action by 2019

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and a group of global leaders from developing and developed countries have met to voice support during a high-level dialogue for a climate action plan that targets those sectors where progress by the Climate Summit 2019 could have the greatest impacts on reducing emissions and building resilience.

The Secretary-General proposed a strategy to the leaders that focus on six key issues that include investment in clean technology, carbon pricing, the energy transition, risk mitigation, augmenting the contribution of sub-national actors and business, and mobilizing finance.  Several leaders also proposed that the challenges of deforestation and ocean degradation also be addressed.

The informal dialogue took place during the UN General Assembly High Level Week with leaders or high-level officials from more than 20 countries, followed a meeting that the Secretary-General had with non-party stakeholders. 

That meeting emphasized the need for greater engagement by local governments, states, regions, businesses and investors, and communities to fully implement the Paris Agreement on climate change.

“Your leadership is absolutely key to attaining and raising the ambition of the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Guterres told the leaders. “I announced the intention to convene a Climate Summit in 2019, here in New York.  We need all actors in society to work for a resilient and low emissions future – national and local governments, businesses and investors, scientists, civil society and citizens everywhere.

“That is why I asked you here today,” he added.  “We need to build ambition and accelerate action – before it’s too late.”

While praising the Secretary-General’s bold move to convene a Climate Summit in 2019, leaders not only expressed support to the Secretary-General’s Climate Strategy but also offered to lead a specific area.

President of France spearheaded discussions on finance and will be hosting a Summit in December 2017 to focus on this critical issue.

China and India focused on the need for scaling up efforts in energy and technology.

Prime Minister of Denmark offered to build a “Clean Energy Investment Coalition”, while the

President of Hungary offered to galvanize efforts in promoting the role of the non-state actors. Prime Minister of UK outlined the need for enhancing efforts at risk mitigation, while the Prime Minister of Norway agreed to focus on carbon pricing. The Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers said they were also accelerating their own climate action, and exchanged views on how actions in specific areas could progress further.

Included in the dialogue were leaders from Australia, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Norway, Poland, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Russian Federation, Mexico, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The discussions, first of its kind since the leaders gathered in Paris in 2015, were aimed at reinvigorating highest political level engagement to herald a new phase at mobilizing and scaling up transformative action that will allow the world to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

They also recognize that the coalitions that have come together to develop and adopt the Paris Agreement must now shift their focus from regime building and containment of emission to implementation and ramping up of ambition.