COP 20 Outcomes and Critiques

The 20th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and the 10th session of COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, took place from 1 - 14 December in Lima, Peru. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a new 2015 agreement on climate change that will harness action by all nations, took a step forward in Lima following 12 days of negotiations by over 190 countries. The new agreement is scheduled to be agreed in Paris in late 2015.

Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) will form the foundation for climate action post 2020 when the new agreement is set to come into effect. INDCs are the commitments (now nationally determined contributions that maintain countries’ autonomy) countries are expected to make in order to keep average global temperature rise below 2˚C – the internationally-agreed limit aimed at preventing irreversible climate change. In a statement, Secretary-General of the United Nations Mr. Ban Ki-moon applauded delegates for “finalizing the institutional architecture for a mechanism on loss and damage.” According to Professor Harald Winkler, an African Climate & Development Initiative affiliate from the Energy Research Centre (ERC) that attended COP 20 “loss and damage is what happens when adaptation as a gradual response to impacts no longer suffices.”

UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, admitted that the two-week conference had proven to be “very, very challenging” but she nonetheless praised the outcome as it had left “a range of key decisions agreed and action-agendas launched, including how to better scale up and finance adaptation, alongside actions on forests and education.”

Some of the key outcomes:

Lima Adaptation Knowledge Initiative
Progress was made in Lima on elevating adaptation onto the same level as the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) have been recognized as an important pathway to resilience and are aimed to be made more visible. Support from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to adaptation was discussed, and the Lima Adaptation Knowledge Initiative was launched. This initiative is a pilot project in the Andes under the Nairobi Work Programme that underlines the successful capturing of the adaptive needs of communities. Support was shown for replicating this in Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and the African continent.

The Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage was confirmed for two years, focusing on an array of action areas, including enhancing the understanding of how loss and damage due to climate change affects particularly vulnerable developing countries and populations, including indigenous or minority status ones. It will also seek to better the understanding of how climate change impacts human migration and displacement.

Adaptation Finance
Further pledges were made to the GCF by the governments of Norway, Australia, Belgium, Peru, Colombia and Austria--the pledges brought the total sum pledged to close to USD 10.2 billion (to spend over 5 years). In a further boost to the adaptation ambitions of developing countries, Germany made a pledge of 55 million Euros to the Adaptation Fund. China also announced $10 million for South-South cooperation and mentioned they would double it next year.

Kyoto Protocol
The Nauru and Tuvalu islands submitted to the Doha amendment, bringing the number of signatory Parties to 21 (144 are required to bring it into force). The United Nations is still encouraging governments to speed up their acceptance of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the international emissions reduction treaty, in order to provide further momentum for global climate action for the years leading up to 2020.

Climate Action Portal
With UNFCCC support, the government of Peru launched a new portal called the Nazca Climate Action Portal to increase the visibility of the wealth of climate action among cities, regions, companies and investors, including those under international cooperative initiatives.

Technology to developing countries
The transfer of climate technologies with the assistance of the UN and other international agencies is picking up speed, according to the UNFCCC. The Climate Technology Centre and Network reported that it had received around 30 requests for assistance in 2014, and expects the figure to grow to more than 100 in 2015. During Lima the consideration arose to link the UNFCCC’s Technology Mechanism to the GCF and the UNFCCC Finance mechanism.

Gender
The Lima conference agreed on a Lima Work Programme on Gender to advance gender balance and to promote gender sensitivity in developing and implementing climate policy.

Education and Awareness-raising
The Lima Ministerial Declaration on Education and Awareness-raising was announced. It is aimed at developing education strategies that incorporate the issue of climate change in curricula, while also raising awareness on climate change in the design and implementation of national development and climate change strategies.

Outcomes critique

Prof. Harald Winkler provides us with another perspective on the outcomes in Lima that “did not make reaching a deal in Paris easier” due to “lack of adequate long-term finance, and a refusal to balance support of adaptation and mitigation.” A major issue of contention Winkler identified was whether the INDCs deal with mitigation only, or also with adaptation and support (“support” meaning finance, technology and capacity-building).

Transparency

He also critiques the lack of specified information required from INDCs, as decided upon in the final negotiations. “If you took it seriously, the mitigation INDC would specify a base year, and time frame; the scope and coverage of GHG emissions. Quite helpful is the inclusion of planning processes, as this can link into sectoral plans such as electricity that are hotly debated in South Africa and many other countries.” He believes that the large economies of the world, which are also the largest emitters, are not willing to subject their intended contributions to any close scrutiny. “Essentially, the rest of the world is told to take what they submit. To call for enhanced transparency when refusing to submit contributions to any serious examination is not credible,” Winkler says.

Finance “contributions”

The ‘heart of the bargain’ on climate change has been seen by major powers as being a deal on mitigation and finance. Lima seems to have reconfirmed again that the interests of smaller countries – including the Africa Group – which are primarily in adaptation – are not taken seriously. On finance, the INDC urges developed countries to mobilise finance for both mitigation and adaptation, but “urging” is merely an encouragement, and much weaker than what political leaders of developed countries said in Copenhagen in 2009, when they were “committing to a goal” to jointly mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020. Despite all mention of other flows and leveraging, the pledges were not sufficient to build sufficient trust for a strong decision in Lima.

Leap of faith

In Winkler’s view, greater action at the national level is a good thing. So is action by cities, and a host of initiatives outside of the UNFCCC. “However, there is currently no way of knowing what all these initiatives are adding up to – either in tons reduced, or dollars invested, or any other metric. So we are asked to take a leap of faith that the actions, once started, will ‘somehow’ scale up to what is needed to solve the problem. The onus is on those relentlessly driving this bottom-up approach to demonstrate that broad participation can deliver a solution to climate change,” he explains.

Furthermore, Winkler finds the clear refusal by most rich countries to accept adaptation as a global responsibility most worrying. He says “developing countries are asked to take mitigation commitments – that is quite right, as part of our responsibility for the future and to the planet. But if at the same time, developed countries are reducing their own financial obligations, and leaving the most vulnerable to adapt by themselves, that does not seem like a fair deal.”

 

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