This statement is delivered on behalf of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.
We want to denounce the current climate colonialism and the hypocrisy behind it.
Thirty years ago this month, the UNFCCC was ceremoniously signed in Rio, yet countries who benefit most from the fossil fuels causing today’s climate crisis are still not weaning themselves away from their addiction. Contrary to their claims of keeping the 1.5C degrees alive, they continue today expanding their own fossil fuel use, now asking producers to pump more oil and gas – rather than reduce their own consumers’ demand – as the only cure to the current energy price crisis crushing poor countries and communities.
The world urgently needs a “fair shares phase out” of fossil fuels, but instead, talks in the past weeks only showed that rich nations’ emphasis on mitigation looks more like latching on to profitable private sector initiatives, lending them legitimacy by landing them in the UN.
Finance for developing countries continues to be shamefully low, not only for mitigation and adaptation but now also by running away from responsibilities for Loss and Damage. Pay up, polluters. Own up to your climate debt, and historical responsibilities!
While visas are denied to many civil society leaders, the increased presence in Bonn of delegates representing corporate interests is evident especially in the Global Stocktake (GST). GST is our main tool to ratchet up action, but the heavy presence of corporate non-Party stakeholders risks drowning out peoples’ solutions for Real Zero.
Finally, DCJ warns against new attempts to convert our coasts and oceans into financial instruments and experimental sites for marine geoengineering technologies. Geoengineering is under moratoria at CBD and London Convention; UNFCCC must respect and reinforce these precautionary UN decisions.
Two weeks of all talk and no walk: A rocky road to Sharm el-Sheikh
WHAT
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) is holding a press conference on June 15 2022 during the United Nations’ Conference on Climate Change at Bonn. With just hours left for climate talks to conclude in Bonn before negotiators reconvene at COP 27, representatives of DCJ will explain the current state of play at UNFCCC’s SBs, share African civil society’s core demands, and what to expect on the ground in Sharm el-Sheikh in November.
Bonn Climate Change Conference is the 56th session of the subsidiary bodies, which have been taking place from 6 to 16 June 2022, at the World Convention Center Bonn, Germany to prepare for the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in November this year. This year the June sessions were focused on greenhouse gas emission reductions, adapting to climate impacts, and providing financial support for developing countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability International
MODERATOR
Gadir Lavadenz, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
CONTACT
For questions and concerns, please contact: Rachitaa Gupta, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice at [email protected] or Gadir Lavadenz, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice at [email protected]
(Delivered by Gadir Lavadenz, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice)
Mr/Madam Chair,
This statement is delivered on behalf of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.
First, we want to express our deepest solidarity with all those impacted by wars and other acts of violence in our world today.
Second, we want to ask delegates: Why will Bonn be any different than before?
Globally, we are facing war financed by the same fossil fuels warming our planet. Are governments going to address fossil fuel dependency properly?
Loss and damage impacts are more evident than ever affecting the people least responsible for climate change. Will the top historical polluters still run away from their responsibilities?
Finance remains far below the promised $100 billion as the Green Climate Fund runs dry, and the most-polluting Parties avoid any new discussion of concrete figures. Will Parties legally responsible for providing climate finance deliver on their international obligations?
Polluting countries and corporations have already locked in the use of dangerous and ineffective carbon markets through Article 6.2 and 6.4. Now, Parties have an opportunity to advance real solutions that will reduce emissions through Article 6.8. Will they take this opportunity or keep focusing on dangerous distractions?
Global stock taking starts as new data shows 40% of developed fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground to limit warming within 1.5C. But will we watch yet another discussion end without action?
Given the moment of urgency we are living in, we denounce the hyper focus on Net Zero, Nature-based solutions, geoengineering and other distractions that derail us from addressing the real estructural causes of climate change.
Finally and respectfully, we hope that under your guidance time allocation is managed in a way that allows us to speak to an actual crowd instead of to an empty room.
False Solutions, Fossil Farces, and Fake Finance: What to Expect at Bonn Climate Change Conference
WHAT
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) is holding a press conference on 6 June 2022 during the United Nations’ Conference on Climate Change at Bonn. DCJ and its members will share the demands and expectations of grassroot communities and frontline climate crisis defenders from this conference. They will also highlight the corporate capture of climate change dialogue perpetuating false solutions and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry as well as lack of government action to address and mitigate loss and damage and provide climate finance for the Global South communities.
Bonn Climate Change Conference is the 56th session of the subsidiary bodies, which will take place from 6 to 16 June 2022, at the World Convention Center Bonn, Germany to prepare for the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in November this year. This year the June sessions will focus on greenhouse gas emission reductions, adapting to climate impacts, and providing financial support for developing countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
The diplomats who run UNFCCC climate negotiations are fond of doing what they call a “stock take” every once in a while. As we wait and wait for the final COP25 plenary to begin, a day into overtime, let’s do the same.
We came to Madrid with the situation in Chile in our minds and hearts. We have tried to echo the demands of the streets in the halls of power, as have many others.
Chilean trade unionists wear bandages over their eyes while delivering a speech to the #COP25Madrid#COP25 opening plenary today – in reference to the many protestors that have been blinded by police and state forces pic.twitter.com/s20xSQKdhW
At every opportunity we told the COP25 Presidency that we stand in solidarity with the movements in Chile. We supported their demand that Chile stop all repression of peaceful protestors, and take responsibility for human rights violations committed. We also supported calls for the government to establish a constituent assembly.
Chilean movements are clear in their opposition to an economic system which creates and perpetuates inequality. The same system is pouring fuel on the flames of the climate crisis – all around the world.
COP cazeloraso
We marched with 500,000 others against such a system.
And we took the anger of the streets into the halls of power. Because as climate justice movements we are for the many, not the few.
For this the UN security ripped our banners away, shouted at us and kettled us. Over 300 of us were pushed outside, into the cold, before finally being taken outside the venue, to a militarised police escort, before being split up and made to wait.
— Patrick Galey is on @patrickgaley.bsky.social (@patrickgaley) December 12, 2019
Demanding rich countries to tackle the #climatecrisis, the demonstration took inspiration from a popular South American form of protest 'cacerolazo', which originated in #Chile and involves making noise by banging on pots and pans. Read BBC's coverage: https://t.co/HuUMsnaJ6Z
This all happened a matter of hours after Greta Thunberg gave a powerful speech to the conference, in which she said:
In just three weeks we will enter a new decade. This coming decade will define our future. Right now we are desperate for any sign of hope. Well I am telling you there is hope. I have seen it. But it does not come from governments or corporations. It comes from the people.
Of course this wasn’t the first or last action that we took.
Arriving in Madrid we knew that time is running out. A new decade is weeks away. We lamented the loss of the previous decade to inaction and distraction.
We hoped that when countries took stock of their climate actions prior to 2020 they would see the shocking gulf between what they’ve done what what they needed to have done. And then *do* something about it. But just like in 2014, 2016, and 2018, we sat through yet another pointless talk-shop. Neither the COP President nor the UNFCCC offered a process for this ‘stock take’ to lead to anything concrete.
Developing countries proposed to set up a work programme to properly examine the actions taken during pre-2020 period and bridge the “implementation gap.”
It’s good to see a few more people here than at the technical pre-2020 stocktake. Tellingly the room is a lot less crowded that the plenary with Greta this morning. Priorities, right?
In that plenary we heard for the umpteenth time that we have an extremely limited amount of time in which to completely transform our economy and societies.
We’ve already glimpsed the horrors that await us if we don’t – a world on fire and battered by storms. An even less equitable world, less able to react properly to this emergency.
What we haven’t seen is any serious response. Developed countries were supposed to lead but have done next to nothing since 1990. UNEP talks about a lost decade; we should actually talk about 3 lost decades.
It is very hard to build trust with broken promises. I said it at the last plenary: it is a joke that 7 years after it was agreed, Parties have still not ratified the Doha Amendment. The Paris Agreement was ratified in under a year.
We enter the Paris Agreement carrying the failings of the recent past and present. Both mitigation and finance has been wholly inadequate in pre-2020, and sets us up for post-2020 action which will be more challenging, and less fair.
So here’s a question: How can we expect anything from the Paris Agreement if pre-2020 agreements have been cast aside?
Here’s another: what’s the point of distant, loophole-ridden, false-zero 2050 targets such as the UK’s, when pre-2020 action has been forgotten? Today’s leaders won’t be alive, let alone in power in 2050. We know your 2050 pledges are just more lies.
For these reasons, we echo the proposal by LMDC, supported by Africa Group, Arab group, and others, for COP25 to mandate a work programme on closing the pre-2020 implementation gaps on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, and capacity building and to close those gaps. We need more ideas like this.
We don’t need any more conversations or reflections. Do your fair share.
No Accountability
We have another potentially useful tool to assess and hold northern countries accountable for the climate action they have or haven’t taken before 2020. It’s called the 2nd Periodic Review. The last report of this kind produced language about 1.5 and 2 degrees goals which eventually made its way into the Paris Agreement.
But developed countries were aware of this and made proposals which would make the 2nd Review yet another meaningless talk-shop. The US proposed to cancel the review, and when that was not a viable option proposed to narrow the scope to just science. The EU tried to remove the words “assess” and “adequacy” from the text.
Instead the text includes a very watered down phase, “aggregate effect,” which could mean individual country’s commitments can’t be singled out. So there’s no way to hold polluters to account.
The main course for the past 2 weeks, leaving us all with indigestion, was a re-heated dish called “Article 6.” Or, as it has come to be known, “how to pollute more and get away with it” (for background, read above).
Article 6 emerged from negotiations on how countries could work together to reduce emissions. But many polluting countries have fixated on carbon trading and offsetting. Which is frustrating, as these approaches have failed to reduce carbon emissions, and have detrimentally impacted human rights while simultaneously commodifying nature.
These discussions are highly contentious and highly complex. This issue nearly scuppered the COP24 last year in Poland and could potentially do so for real this time. Under pressure to reach any agreement, countries risk landing on a bad agreement. In such a case we think that no deal is better.
Some of the main issues of contention, still unresolved at 4am on Sunday 15 December, are:
whether or not to include language about respecting human rights, indigenous rights, and gender safeguards
whether or not to carry over carbon credits from a previous trading scheme
whether or not to allow for carried credits to be sold or used by the country that generated them
how to conduct “corresponding adjustments” to countries emissions’ data after a trade, in order to avoid “double counting” of emissions reductions
whether or not to include metrics other than reductions in greenhouse gases in the mechanism
whether or not to allow for all forms of greenhouse gas removal, rather than merely “removals by sinks”
how to take the conversation forward on “non-market approaches” to collaboration
whether or not some “share of proceeds” from profit generated by the new mechanism would go towards the Adaptation Fund
whether or not some of the emission reductions generated through the mechanism remain unused by any entity to compensate other emissions, to achieve “overall reduction in global emissions.”
On Friday night the “landing zone” for these questions resembled a sort of crash-site. Human rights are probably in, but in an annex. We think that either carry overs or double counting will make it in. But the countries basically do not agree at all and everyone is saying they won’t back down.
Loss and damage refers to how we deal with the impacts of climate breakdown that are already happening and cannot be avoided. Sudden disasters and slow onset events like droughts lead to loss of lives and livelihoods, but also loss and heritage and culture.
Negotiators disappeared behind closed doors early on and stayed there. Developing countries were very active and put forward their ideas in writing. This directed discussions more towards concrete implementation than ever before. Many civil society groups also advanced the idea of setting up a loss and damage finance facility.
However, rich countries repeatedly blocked loss and damage finance. The US in particular played a lead role in wrecking this lifeline plan for the world’s poor. They proposed to insert a no liability or compensation clause into the Paris Agreement. This would give historical polluters blanket protection against any liability and compensation claims.
The proposal was too hot to leave to technical negotiators and so went to the COP25 Presidency to sort out at a higher level.
The US Is Once Again The Villain At The UN Climate Summit | Via BuzzFeed https://t.co/Fd1kZB3C9D
The small islands made a rather weak proposal which didn’t include a finance facility. Instead they asked for a ‘window’ under the Green Climate Fund (one of the UNFCCC’s multilateral funding mechanisms). Other proposals watered down demands for “new and additional” finance from the historic polluter countries – seemingly in exchange for getting sort term relief on the ground.
Establish a “Santiago Network” to catalyse technical assistance
Contain no language on new and additional finance
“Urge” developed nations to “scale up” finance
Refer to available finance rather than generating new and additional finance
Ask for loss and damage finance to come from the Green Climate Fund (GCF)
This last point is a problem because it “cuts the same cake into more pieces”. Diverting money from the GCF also means eating into adaptation finance and ultimately exposing more people to climate disasters.
Developed countries persisted in opposing the need to have a discussion on long-term finance. As far as they are concerned it ends in 2020 even though the Paris Agreement extends it to 2025. Developing countries made a big stink towards the end of COP and made frequent mention of finance in the plenaries.
All of the above issues were unresolved by the scheduled end time. The talks rolled on to Saturday amid a subdued atmosphere. No glimpse of an agreement was on the horizon. Scheduled closing plenaries disappeared from screens. The Presidency announced a final stock taking session for Saturday morning. Then Saturday evening, then midnight, then 3.30am Sunday. None of them were followed by a closing plenary.
The mood turned sour and those civil society who were left issued ever more alarming soundbites to the even fewer remaining journalists.
Spontaneous press conf in response to shocking new #COP25 text.@harjeet11: “US is holding progress on #LossAndDamage hostage just because it is covering the interests of its own administration & polluting industries.” pic.twitter.com/MWXOJB1xAg
This is falling apart. After 13 days of 'urgent' negotiations, it's clear that some countries aren't here to negotiate at all. They are here to entrench national interest, continue growth-at-all-costs wealth accumulation at the expense of billions of people and the planet #COP25
— Patrick Galey is on @patrickgaley.bsky.social (@patrickgaley) December 14, 2019
#COP25Madrid is a master class in how racism, neo-colonialism & neo-liberalism shapes rich country priorities. As the talks edge towards collapse the US, Australia, UK & others are the climate criminals – happy to sacrifice global South to protect their economic interests.
I am grateful that many of the countries of the world who have the most to lose from the climate crisis are standing tall to protect every one of us, facing down the Trump Administration who would rather safeguard corporate profits than the future of humanity. #COP25#COP25Madrid
We held a space to represent the views of the people of the world. Not the governments.
#COP25FailedPeople so we're holding our own Closing Plenary to show what actually needed to happen. EU, US, Aus and other rich countries blocked and backslid on every issue here in direct contravention of the mandate from people's movements everywhere calling for justice. #cop25pic.twitter.com/eI0zFOGy6E
At the time of writing (4am Sunday morning) the negotiations are still ongoing. Countries are hell bent on avoiding a no-deal. None of them want to deal with the fallout. Copenhagen has traumatised them as it traumatised us.
@COP25CL feels more and more like #COP15 in Copenhagen. That’s no compliment.
But the agreements are hard to come by. Finance, loss and damage, article 6, and the COP decision itself are all stuck. The Presidency keeps drafting new texts based on inputs but when the inputs are contradictory, trust is at an all-time low and the diplomacy skills are weak, what chance is there of success?
Anger as rifts scupper hopes of breakthrough at UN climate talks
Governments including the US, Brazil, Australia and China accused of frustrating COP25 negotiations in Madridhttps://t.co/M8JVTsa7Q9#COP25#Auspol
Big Polluters and Northern countries are throwing gasoline on the fire of the climate crisis, knowingly paving the way for even more fossil fuels
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Before COP25 even began, it was clear that Big Polluters — including the fossil fuel, agriculture, forestry, and carbon market industries — plan to lock the world into catastrophic warming in the next few years. Intended fossil fuel expansion by 2030 is at least 50% beyond a 2C target and 120% beyond what may be compatible with the global commitment to limit heating to 1.5C. The vast majority of this expansion is projected to come from the U.S. and Canada.
Big Polluters brought their agenda straight to the halls of the U.N. at COP25. With the help of governments like the U.S., EU, Australia, Canada, and others historically most responsible for the climate crisis, these polluters are strategically advancing rather than protecting against this deadly agenda:
They want to use carbon markets to “offset” rather than cut emissions, by commodifying nature and shifting burdens through carbon trading to the South — burdens that will be disproportionately forced onto and violate the rights of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and frontline communities.
Polluting countries and corporations are pushing so-called “nature-based solutions,” which could be a euphemism for large scale biomass burning, carbon storage technologies, the commodification of the ocean, and carbon trading and offsets, that will displace food production and force continued deforestation.
Seemingly innocuous language on metrics could open the door to the most dangerous geo-engineering technologies by spraying sulfur into the Earth’s atmosphere to block some sunlight from reaching the planet.
The result of all of this is that food security and the integrity of biodiverse ecosystems would simultaneously be threatened by climate change, by carbon trading projects, and by large-scale geo-engineered disruption of the planet. All this so that Big Polluters can continue digging up, burning, and profiting from fossil fuels.
These polluters know they are wreaking havoc on the planet but seek to extract as much profit as possible in the near term with the vain idea that their wealth will protect them from the impacts of planetary breakdown.
That’s why, in addition to all the above, they are seeking to avoid any liability for this deliberate destruction by attempting to expand a waiver against liability and block compensation and finance in discussions that are designed to protect the communities on the frontlines from harmful impacts: loss and damage.
If these proposals – being rammed through by polluting governments and the corporate interests they are serving – are packaged into a “deal” at the close of this COP, it will surely be a deal only for the corporate elites, while damning people and the planet. Such a deal would completely disregard best agreed science, including that presented by the IPCC. It would condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters. And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5.
Experts have now assessed that the existential threat of climate change impacts surpasses that of weapons of mass destruction. We need bold, transformative and immediate action: We must prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels. We must fast track a just and peaceful transition to a safe, healthy and sustainable future for all. We must make Big Polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused.
It is not too late for governments to change the outcomes of COP25. In these final hours, it is not too late for developing countries to stand strong, to resolutely refuse the agenda of polluters. The need is clear: Advance real solutions, not carbon markets. Ensure developed countries provide funds and technology to help avert and minimize the worst impacts of climate change. Respect gender, youth and human rights, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples. And, recognizing that these polluters have known full well the harms they’ve caused, protect the right of sovereign nations to hold them liable.
From the Amazon to the Arctic, our world is on fire. Allowing expansion of coal, oil and gas production at this moment of history is throwing gasoline on the fire.
ActionAid International
Aksi! Indonesia
Alliance for Future Generations – Fiji
ALTSEAN
Les Amis de la Terre Togo
Arctic Youth Sweden
Articulación de Movimientos Sociales de Nicaragua
Artivist Network
ASEED Europe
Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development
Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas
Asociación Cubana de Producción Animal
Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agrícolas y Forestales
Asociación filosófica de artes marciales songahm, Uruguay
Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba
Athens County Fracking Action Network
BankTrack
Center for Biological Diversity
Centre for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka
Centro Ecosocial Latinoamericano
Centro Félix Varela
CIET-Uruguay
CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network)
CLEAN Kulna Bangladesh
Climate Justice Edmonton
Climate Justice Programme
The Climate Reality Project América Latina
Climate Watch Thailand
CliMates
Coalición México Salud-Hable
Colectivo Pro Derechos Humanos, PRODH-Ecuador
Colectivo Viento Sur
Collectif Breakfree – Switzerland
Collectif Senegalais des Africaines pour la Promotion de l’Education Relative a l’Environnement (COSAPERE)
Comisión Nacional Permanente de Lucha Antitabáquica – COLAT
Consejo de Iglesias de Cuba
Corporate Accountability
Corporate Europe Observatory
CUBASOLAR
Dakota Water Walk and Ride
Diko Bigas Institute Nepal
Earth in Brackets
EarthWorks
Eco Justice Valandovo
Ecologistas en Acción
Educar Consumidores
Energy and Climate Policy Institute for Just Transition
ENLACES por la Sustentabilidad
Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
ETC Group
FIC Argentina
FESAR-Ecuador
Fiji Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (FYSA)
Foro de Salud Pública, Ecuador
Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Friends of the Earth Europe
Friends of the Earth International
Friends of the Earth Scotland
Frontera Water Protection Alliance
Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Argentina)
Fundación Ellen Riegner de Casas
Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer
Fundación Salud Ambiente y Desarrollo, FUNSAD, Ecuador
Fundeps-Argentina
Gastivists
GenderCC-Women for Climate Justice
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Green Course
Health of Mother Earth Foundation
Indian Social Action Forum
Indigenous Environmental Network – International
International Centre for Climate Change and Development
International Economic OrganizationWorld Distribution Federation
Karavali Karnataka Janabhivridhi Vedike
Krisoker Sor Farmers’ Voice
Landesa (Rural Development Institute)
LEDARS Bangladesh
March for Science
Mesa Colombiana de Incidencia por las Enfermedades Crónicas (MECIEC)
MOCICC-Peru
Mom Loves Taiwan Association
National Association of Professional Environmentalists
National Hawkers Federation India
NGO Defensoría Ambiental
Oil Change International
Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico, (CLOC – LVC, Caribe)
People’s Coalition on the Right to Water Indonesia (KRuHA)
Planète Amazone
Plataforma Boliviana frente al Cambio Climático
El Poder del Consumidor, México
Proyectando un Ambiente y Sociedad Verde A.C.
Redhawk Native American Arts Council
Red Uruguaya ONGs Ambientalistas
Redrum Motorcycle Club
RENATA-Costa Rica
Sacred Stone
Salud Justa Mx- México
Schaghticoke First Nations
Seeding Sovereignty
Semilla Warunkwa
SERUNI Indonesia
Servicios Ecuménicos para Reconciliación y Reconstrucción
Sierra Club BC
Sociedad Amigos del Viento (Uruguay)
Sociedad Cubana para la Promoción de las fuentes renovables de energía y respeto ambiental
Declaración conjunta de la sociedad civil sobre la COP25
Los grandes contaminadores y los países del norte están arrojando gasolina al fuego de la crisis climática, abriendo deliberadamente el camino para aún más combustibles fósiles.
Incluso antes de que comenzara la COP25, estaba claro que los grandes contaminadores, incluidas las industrias de combustibles fósiles, agricultura, silvicultura y mercados de carbono, planean condenar al mundo a un calentamiento catastrófico en los próximos años. Los planes de expansión de la industria de combustibles fósiles para el 2030 nos llevaría al menos a 50% por encima del objetivo de 2˚C y a 120% más de lo compatible con el compromiso global de limitar el calentamiento en 1.5˚C. Se prevé que la gran mayoría de esta expansión provenga de los EE.UU. Y Canadá.
Los grandes contaminadores trajeron su agenda directamente a los pasillos de la ONU en la COP25. Con la ayuda de gobiernos como Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Australia, Canadá y otros históricamente responsables de la crisis climática. Estos contaminadores en lugar de proteger, están avanzando estratégicamente esta agenda mortal :
Quieren utilizar los mercados de carbono para “compensar” en lugar de reducir las emisiones, mediante la mercantilización de la naturaleza y através del comercio de carbono hacia el Sur, mecanismos que se traducirán en violaciones desproporcionadas de los derechos de las mujeres, los jóvenes, los pueblos indígenas y las comunidades en primera línea.
Los países y corporaciones contaminantes están impulsando las llamadas “soluciones basadas en la naturaleza”, que puede ser un eufemismo para la quema de biomasa a gran escala, las tecnologías de almacenamiento de carbono y las compensaciones para el comercio de carbono, que competirán con la producción de alimentos y fomentarán la deforestación.
Quieren ir aún más lejos y abrir la puerta a las peligrosas tecnologías de geoingeniería para rociar azufre en la atmósfera de la Tierra para evitar que el calor del sol llegue al planeta.
Como resultado, la seguridad de alimentos y la integridad de los ecosistemas biodiversos se verán amenazados simultáneamente por el cambio climático, por los proyectos de comercio de carbono y por la disrupción de la geoingeniería a escala planetaria. Todo esto para que los grandes contaminadores puedan continuar extrayendo, quemando y haciendo lucro de los combustibles fósiles.
Estos contaminadores saben que están causando estragos en el planeta, pero buscan extraer la mayor cantidad de ganancias posibles a corto plazo con la vana idea de que su riqueza los protegerá de los impactos del colapso planetario.
Es por eso que, además de todo lo anterior, buscan evitar cualquier responsabilidad por esta destrucción deliberada al fomentar una exención contra la responsabilidad y bloquear la idea de compensación y financiamiento en las discusiones de Daños y Perdidas, que están diseñadas para proteger a las comunidades en la primera línea de los impactos destructivos.
Si estas propuestas, producto de la captura corporativa de los gobiernos, se materializan en un “acuerdo” al finalizar esta COP, será, sin lugar a duda, un acuerdo solo para las élites corporativas, mientras que condenará a los pueblos y al planeta. Tal acuerdo ignoraría por completo las recomendaciones de la ciencia, incluida la presentada por el IPCC. Condenaría a los que están en la primera línea de la crisis climática, mientras oculta los crímenes de los contaminadores. Y conduciría a un aumento de la desigualdad y no a un aumento de la ambición climática, sin reducciones de emisiones reales y sin un camino hacia 1.5˚C.
Los expertos han aseverado que la amenaza existencial que el cambio climático representa, supera la de las armas de destrucción masiva. Necesitamos medidas audaces, transformadoras e inmediatas: debemos evitar la proliferación de los combustibles fósiles. Debemos acelerar una transición justa y pacífica hacia un futuro seguro, saludable y sostenible para todos. Debemos hacer que los grandes contaminadores paguen por el daño que han causado.
No es demasiado tarde para que los gobiernos cambien los resultados de la COP25. En estas últimas horas, no es demasiado tarde para que los países en desarrollo se mantengan firmes y rechacen decididamente la agenda de los contaminadores. La necesidad es clara: avanzar en soluciones reales, no en mercados de carbono. Asegurar que los países desarrollados proporcionen recursos financieros y tecnología para ayudar a evitar y minimizar los peores impactos del cambio climático. Respetar los derechos de género, jóvenes y humanos, incluyendo los derechos de los pueblos inígenos. Y, reconociendo que estos contaminadores conocen bien los daños que han causado, proteger el derecho soberano de las naciones a responsabilizarlos.
Desde el Amazonas hasta el Ártico, nuestro mundo está en llamas. Permitir la expansión de la producción de carbón, petróleo y gas en este momento de la historia es arrojar gasolina al fuego.
Since the early years of the UN climate talks, governments responsible for needing to make the deepest emissions cuts have repeatedly attempted to divert this responsibility. They have done so in several faulty and flawed ways: by creating and advocating for “market mechanisms” to trade units of carbon, by incorporating carbon capture technologies into emissions reductions plans, and by advocating for “techno-fixes” including dangerous and untested geoengineering technologies.
The underlying feature of all of these is the principle of offsetting – outsourcing emissions to elsewhere or trading credits to buy permission to emit. Sort of like the indulgences of the 12th century Catholic Church.
Offsetting emissions through market mechanisms is the antithesis to a true climate response from the global community, and from industrialized countries in particular. The science is clear: keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius will require strong emissions cuts, beginning in the developed world, which needs to achieve actual zero emissions as soon as possible. Mechanisms that rely on offsetting delay meaningful action and don’t address the fundamental gap between the 1.5 degree target and countries’ weak progress in emissions reductions.
Furthermore, these mechanisms are rife with loopholes and often allow polluters to increase their emissions and profit from participating in such schemes, all while claiming the false banner of climate leadership. More recently, so called ‘Nature Based Solutions’ have formed the battleground in the fight to extend the concept of commodification of carbon to all ecosystems, with soil carbon, biodiversity and other values being measured and commodified.
What is a carbon market?
A carbon market is a scheme that views atmospheric space in “units”. These units are essentially the right to pollute for a price. The assumption of a carbon market is that if polluters are made to pay per unit of emissions, they will be incentivised to invest in alternatives or pollute less. Yet the opposite has proven true.
There's a lot of propaganda being put out to promote false solutions & dangerous distractions like carbon trading, offsetting, and geoengineering. Educate yourselves about their dangers with resources like this: https://t.co/8skM9YfapI#COP25Madrid#COP25
For industries and countries with more wealth, carbon markets simply allow them to continue with business as usual while outsourcing their emissions elsewhere. The established market mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (below) are riddled with loopholes and have actually resulted in an increase in emissions.
Repeating the same mistakes
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol established the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a highly controversial, contested scheme which eventually proved to be ineffective in meeting the targets of the Kyoto Protocol.
The intention of the CDM was to help developed countries meet their emissions reductions targets under the Protocol through the purchase of emissions reductions credits, but the actual result was that some businesses made a lot of money selling “credits” to entities who wanted to pollute more but not have said pollution on their books. The CDM was also widely criticised for harming local people and violating human rights, especially the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as failing to actually cut emissions.
For years afterwards, international negotiations on markets usually ended in no agreement between countries, although of course some countries did set up their own domestic markets which they hoped would one day allow for international trading.
Countries that are strongly in favour of market approaches include the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and the US, while countries including Venezuela and Bolivia have strongly resisted such offsetting mechanisms. It is not clear how the recent turmoil will affect Bolivia or whether its “transitional” government will do a u-turn or simply remain silent.
After a frenzied two weeks of negotiations in 2015, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement ended up allowing countries to “choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions and to promote sustainable development and environmental integrity,” and to engage “on a voluntary basis in cooperative approaches that involve the use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs)” which can count towards their NDCs so long as they promote sustainable development, avoid double counting and ensure environmental integrity.
Thus the door was opened to conflate carbon trading and offsetting with “cooperative approaches” to tackling climate change. The reference to “ITMOs” has also opened the door for the establishment of an international carbon market – contentious given the years of debate on this matter never arriving at an agreement, and laden with pitfalls and risks.
The ITMOs also pose the difficult question of whether a country can use such international transfers for anything other than fulfilling its Paris pledge. Can they, for example, be used in the global offsetting scheme under the International Civil Aviation Organisation, known as ‘Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation’ (CORSIA), which is not under the UNFCCC and which could potentially rely on 2.6 billion tonnes of ‘credits’ from supposedly avoided deforestation.
Similarly, can carbon credits from other schemes outside the Paris Agreement also be traded alongside credits generated in the PA? Such schemes include the reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation or REDD+ scheme, also highly criticised for leading to increased emissions and harm to forest communities and indigenous peoples.
Rather than focus on more meaningful, equitable methods of cooperation like technology sharing, capacity building, and finance, Article 6 decided that a “Sustainable Development Mechanism” should be set up. Like the CDM before it, this new market mechanism, if it is established, is likely to fail in delivering emissions reductions targets outlined in countries’ National Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.
COP25 and the fate of Article 6
Last year at COP24 in Katowice, the section of the “Paris rulebook” dealing with Article 6 was not agreed and became a major sticking point. The talks nearly collapsed in spectacular fashion as Brazil wanted the certified emission reduction credits (CERs) it had obtained under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism to be counted towards its pledge under the Paris Agreement, and refused to accept rules to prevent double-counting. Eventually the formal conclusion was that no agreement could be reached. The same thing happened at the next round of talks in Bonn this June.
The scene is therefore set for a pressurised round of talks in Madrid, as COP25 is the deadline to conclude this last remaining section of the Paris rulebook. Agreement will be difficult as double counting remains an unresolved issue and wealthy countries such as Australia continue to insist on double-counting their Kyoto credits towards their Paris commitments.
Carbon Market Watch estimates that there are some 20 billion units under the Kyoto mechanisms that could potentially be transferred into the Paris mechanism, rendering the Agreement’s 1.5 degree C goal impossible to achieve. But it gets worse.
[s]ome countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement have low targets which will be easy to over achieve. This means that these countries could potentially create between 18.7 and 28.3 GtCO2e worth of credits – or ‘hot air ’- that they can sell without reducing a single tonne of greenhouse gas emissions.
Market fundamentalists will want to leave Madrid with detailed technical guidelines to allow them to forge ahead with international carbon markets. Many others, notably those who do not stand to profit financially from these market mechanisms, will want only general guidance to try and ensure that if, or when, international markets are established they are regulated and do not threaten human rights or environmental integrity as they have under Kyoto.
Guidance, such as that offered by Carbon Market Watch below, can be quite simple:
Only emission reductions that take place after 2020 can be used towards the NDCs
Countries that over achieve their targets because they were set below business-as-usual emission levels in the first place should not be allowed to transfer these hot air credits to other countries that have adopted more stringent targets
Countries with hot air in their current NDCs should not be allowed to transfer it to subsequent NDC periods to meet future targets
Emissions should not be compensated through the use of excessively old credits, representing emissions which took place a decade or more earlier
With everything else in the Paris rulebook “package” having been wrapped up, it’s hard to see what exactly the horse trading will be but we can be sure of some.
Real solutions
The only way to reach real zero emissions as quickly as possible is to reject these dangerous distractions outright, and simultaneously for developed countries to embrace meaningful, real solutions to achieve the deep emissions cuts they are responsible for, while unconditionally financing the same in developing countries. There is an abundance of real, feasible, cost effective action across all sectors that can be implemented here and now, many of which will have immediate effect.
These include things like but not limited to investing in infrastructure of electrified, mass public transit, with free or heavily subsidized fares; rapidly transforming industrial agriculture towards agroecological practices through proper incentives and policies combined with removal of perverse subsidies, and phase out artificial fertilizers; embracing community governed forest conservation; planning for and transforming energy systems away from centralized corporate-controlled fossil fuels and other harmful technologies to clean, safe systems that empower people and communities.
Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement provides an opportunity to address the real drivers of emissions by advancing policies and practices via voluntary cooperation among countries that can help deliver deep emissions cuts while advancing equity, environmental protection, and wellbeing. A work programme on how to enhance linkages and create synergy between inter alia, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer and capacity-building and how to facilitate the implementation and coordination of non-market approaches is under discussion at COP25.
Further reading
Click here to learn more about what carbon markets are and how they work
Click here to learn more about how carbon markets are a threat to people and planet
Click here to learn more about what real international solutions to the crisis look like
Click here to learn more about the nitty gritty of Article 6 negotiations
Even a cursory glance at the latest climate science makes it abundantly clear that the commitments to the Paris Agreement (“Nationally Determined Contributions” or NDCs for short) are simply not good enough. But rich countries are wriggling around to escape from any attempt to revise those plans in light of science and equity before they take effect in January 2021.
There is a pattern here: in 2012, countries agreed the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol. This decision contained binding targets for rich countries to cut pollution from 2013 – 2020. Seven years later and the Amendment has still not been ratified. For comparison, the Paris Agreement was ratified in under a year.
Several rich countries (Canada, Russia, and Japan) actually said they would no longer participate in agreements to reduce aggregate emissions by 18% below 1990 levels and revise this target in 2014.
The so-called “pre-2020 action” has been shown by civil society to be wholly inadequate and unjust as it transfers the burden of tackling climate change from rich to poor. What should be a case of “why put off to tomorrow what you can do today” has become a case of kicking the can further and further down the road. A review of this pre-2020 action, or lack thereof, is scheduled to take place in two stages in Madrid. The first stage on December 4th will be technical followed by a high-level segment on December 10th.
However, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and the US are unwilling to let the review be more than just a talk shop, as was the case with previous reviews. This is hardly surprising given that ten years of UNEP Emissions Gap reports have basically stated that these countries have spent the last decade doing the exact opposite of what they should have done.
Graphic from the 2019 Emission Gap Report
Not only have we lost a decade to inaction, according to a new report our governments’ current plans for the coming decade involves the production of a whopping 120% more fossil fuels than we have the ability to produce without blowing past 1.5C warming.
Let that sink in.
As we hurtle towards, perhaps beyond, planetary tipping points, there are people in positions of power making a conscious decision to risk the basis for human civilisation — all in the pursuit of profit.
Of course, we cannot now get back the time we’ve lost. But the next critical decade does not have to be the same as the past. The future is not yet written. We know that global emissions must decrease by 7.6% annually starting now if we are to have any chance of averting a 1.5C warmer world. This would still be a world of incredible climate violence such as we have witnessed this year with forest fires ravaging California and Australia, flooding inundating Venice, and cyclones battering Mozambique, the Bahamas, and China.
So we need a plan for rapid decarbonisation in every country. But as author Naomi Klein and scientist Sivan Kartha explained in a recent article in the Boston Globe,
“at a time of tremendous economic inequality and injustice, only a plan firmly rooted in both fairness and boldness has a hope of building the support necessary to take on the big polluters and win transformative climate action.”
This is plainly obvious and evidenced in recent protests in Ecuador as well as the Gilet Jaunes protests across France – both sparked by a regressive fuel tax. But the same idea of fairness must also apply at the global level, for the same reasons. As the IPCC put it in their landmark report on 1.5C warming:
“Public acceptability can enable or inhibit the implementation of policies and measures to limit global warming and adapt to the consequences. Public acceptability depends on the individual’s evaluation of expected policy consequences, the perceived fairness of the distribution of these consequences and perceived fairness of decision procedures.”
No country can stop climate change on its own. If one, even a large polluter like the US, managed to enact a just transition to zero carbon overnight, it would still experience climate change alongside the rest of the world unless all other countries vastly reduced their emissions too. The irrefutable need for an international approach is the basis for these negotiations. And that requires trust – something which has been severely undermined by decades of broken promises like we have seen with the failure to ratify the Doha Amendment and the failure to deliver the $100 billion per year of desperately needed climate finance.
According to @NaomiAKlein and Sivan Kartha, one part of @BernieSanders' Green New Deal is proving to be the most resonant: the idea that the biggest polluters should help underwrite the costs of shifting to renewable energy. https://t.co/R6ymoMQu8T
Following massive anti-austerity and anti-government protests across Chile, the 25th United Nations’ annual climate change summit – Conference of the Parties, or COP for short – was relocated from Santiago to Madrid. By offering to host the summit instead, Spain gave the Chilean government a chance to escape the international spotlight that would have further exposed its violent crackdown of protests which were escalating in the run up to COP25. It is estimated that the state violence in Santiago is now the worst the country has seen since the Pinochet dictatorship, but the news cycle has moved on.
The change of location created logistical havoc and will severely limit participation in the debate. Tens of thousands of delegates had planned to travel to Santiago not only for the UN meetings but for large social fora such as the Cumbre de los Pueblos, or People’s Summit. Those hit hardest by the location change will as usual be groups that are primarily indigenous, grassroots movements, and from the Global South.
Chile is still presiding over the meeting in Madrid, but how domestic unrest and the sudden relocation will affect its leadership and legitimacy at COP remains to be seen – as does the exact nature of Spain’s role (Spain held its second general election of 2019 on November 10th and at the time of writing has yet to form a government).
Alongside this political turmoil, the chaos of climate change is intensifying at a terrifying rate. The world’s chance to avert catastrophic runaway climate change is quickly escaping. In November the World Meteorological Organization announced that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have risen to a record high. The United Nations Environment Program’s 2019 “Emissions Gap Report” unequivocally stated that, in order to remain within the 1.5C warming threshold, global emissions must be reduced by 7.6% annually from now until 2030. This represents a five-fold increase in ambition compared to current plans as laid out in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
COP25 is the penultimate meeting before the Paris Agreement NDCs comes into effect in January 2021 and countries are expected to start implementing their commitments. However, in spite of growing numbers of people taking to the streets to demand action, the meeting threatens to be the latest installment in a years-long Great Escape of responsibility that rich countries have been enacting.
To escape from their responsibilities, rich industrialised countries are using dangerous distractions like carbon markets which undermine real solutions. They are deliberately forgetting their previous promises, delaying others from taking action by withholding vital funding, and shutting down any attempts to talk about compensation for climate damages.
We will explore each of these escape routes for polluters in the coming days as COP25 gets underway.
Notes
Before diving into the specific issues at COP25 it’s worth checking out the following links which contain important background to understanding the evolving dynamics of the climate change negotiations and the climate justice movements’ demands.
The idea began early in the week when Saudi Arabia raised procedural concerns with the agenda item relating to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5, which was published in October last year.
The Saudis said that the topic should be discussed under an existing agenda item, not a new stand-alone agenda item. After some back-and-forth, the SBSTA chair proposed that Parties have a “substantive” exchange of views on the topic, and conclude the agenda item at that session in Bonn. Everyone agreed.
But then the headlines came.
There’s been a lot of noise about #Saudi forcing parties to “drop” the IPCC from the Paris #climate deal
It can’t do that and hasn’t tried. But it’s not making it easy to suggest it’s still negotiating based on the “best available” science
— Patrick Galey is on @patrickgaley.bsky.social (@patrickgaley) June 24, 2019
Before going any further it must be said for the avoidance of confusion that the Kingdom has spent many years and millions of dollars undermining the climate science of the IPCC, and making sure negotiations in the UNFCCC do not set ambitious mitigation goals.
This is unsurprising for a country whose economy is wholly based on oil. They are trying to buy time.
But for many complex reasons they have been made into the sole villain of a long-running play with an abundance of villains, including some truly evil geniuses.
For example, the United States had in fact opposed the actual IPCC Special Report back in October…
Very little of the coverage explored the reasoning behind some of the statements. Thankfully Third World Network does that, and reports what exactly was said by whom, so you can judge for yourself.
— Third World Network (@3rdworldnetwork) July 2, 2019
An unfortunate reality that has been caught up in the “science denialism” is the fact that there are in fact gaps in the IPCC reports. The IPCC readily acknowledges this. It is not a controversial statement, nor should stating it serve to undermine the basic findings of the IPCC.
In fact, science, and in particular climate science, is always political. From the selection of authors, to decisions about what qualifies as acceptable literature to peer-review, to the negotiation of the summary for policymakers, the entire process – like any aspect of life – is political. The IPCC is not immune from assumptions which are anything but neutral, including assumptions built in to the models about how much we will have to rely on certain unproven technologies…
None of this changes the fact that the IPCC is the best available science.
I totally agree that Saudi Arabia and the US should not be objecting. But it is also irresponsible to claim this undermines the Paris Agreement. It is still based on best available science and still calls for 1.5C. The good work remains.
1.5C goal already IS in the Paris Agreement, the foundation of which is to achieve this goal in the context of SD/ poverty eradication. It would be very nice if SBSTA could welcome the excellent work of the #IPCC , but it is not a foundational requirement.
What’s not clear is that a failure to enthusiastically welcome IPCC under the relative insignificance of a stand-alone SBSTA conclusion actually… matters.
It is interesting that there was not so much coverage of stories about how rich countries conspired to delete references to conflicts of interest, or how peddlers of false solutions kept forcing their free-market ideology down our throats. And we have to ask why were these issues trumped by procedural bickering about a report which has already been written, and its negotiated summary widely circulated.
Or why the headline for every single news outlet was not this:
My new book and database provide crucial evidence of the global elite’s role in accelerating climate change and preventing the green transition https://t.co/um9OkHT0uL#polluterelite
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