The as-yet unfinished exhibit area which forms part of the temporary installations that the host country has built in Lima to hold the COP 20, which runs Dec. 1-12. Credit: COP20 Peru

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 17 2014 (IPS)

This December, 195 nations plus the European Union will meet in Lima for two weeks for the crucial U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, known as COP 20. The hope in Lima is to produce the first complete draft of a new global climate agreement.
However, this is like writing a book with 195 authors. After five years of negotiations, there is only an outline of the agreement and a couple of ‘chapters’ in rough draft.

The deadline is looming: the new climate agreement to keep climate change to less than two degrees C is to be signed in Paris in December 2015.

“A tremendous amount of work has to be done in Lima,” said Erika Rosenthal, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organisation and advisor to the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).Climate science is clear that global CO2 emissions must begin to decline before 2020 – otherwise, preventing a 2C temperature rise will be extremely costly and challenging.

“Time is short after Lima and Paris cannot fail,” said Rosenthal. “Paris is the key political moment when the world can decisively move to reap all the benefits of a clean, carbon-free economy.”

Success in Lima will depend in part on Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal. As official president of COP 20, Pulgar-Vidal’s determination and energy will be crucial, most observers believe.

Climate change is a major issue in Peru, since Lima and many other parts of the country are dependent on freshwater from the Andes glaciers. Studies show they have lost 30 to 50 percent of their ice in 30 years and many will soon be gone.

Pulgar-Vidal has said he expects Lima to deliver a draft agreement, although it may not include all the chapters. The full draft with all the chapters needs to be completed by May 2015 to have time for final negotiations.

The future climate agreement, which could easily be book-length, will have three main sections or pillars: mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. The mitigation or emissions reduction pillar is divided into pre-2020 emission reductions and post-2020 sections.

Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, during one of the many events held to promote the COP 20. As chairman of the conference, his negotiating ability and energy will be crucial to the progress made towards a new draft climate agreement. Credit: COP20 Peru

Both remain contentious, in terms of how much each country should reduce and by when.

Climate science is clear that global CO2 emissions must begin to decline before 2020 – otherwise, preventing a 2C temperature rise will be extremely costly and challenging.

However, emissions in 2014 are expected to be the highest ever at 40 billion tonnes, compared to 32 billion in 2010. This year is also expected to be the warmest on record.

In 2009, at COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed countries agreed to make pre-2020 emission reductions under the Copenhagen Accord. However, those commitments fall far short of what’s needed and no country has since increased their “ambition”, as it is called.

Some – like Japan, Australia and Canada – have even backed away from their commitments.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held a special summit with 125 heads of state on Sep. 24 in hopes countries’ would use the event to announce greater reductions. Instead, developed countries like the U.S. made general promises to do more while hundreds of thousands of people around the world marched to demand their leaders to take action.

The ambition deadlock was evident at the U.N. Bonn Climate Conference in October with developing nations pushing their developed counterparts for greater pre-2020 cuts.

However, the country bloc known as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) proposed a supplementary approach to reducing emissions that involves countries sharing their knowledge, technology and policy mechanisms.

Practical, useful and necessary, this may become a formal part of a new agreement, Rosenthal hopes.

“There were very good discussions around renewable energy and policies to reduce emissions in Bonn,” agrees Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, international policy advisor at CAN-Latin America, a network of NGOs.

“Developed countries need to make new reduction pledges in Lima,” Konstantinidis told TA.

This includes pledges for post-2020 cuts. Europe’s target of at least 40 percent cuts by 2030 is not large enough. Emerging countries like China, Brazil, India and others must also make major cuts since the long-term goal should be a global phase-out of fossil fuel use by 2050 to keep temperatures below 1.5C, he said.

This lower target is what many African and small island countries say is necessary for their long-term survival.

The mitigation pillar still needs agreement on how to measure and verify each country’s emission reductions. It will also need a mechanism to prevent countries from failing to meet their targets, Konstantinidis said.

Ironically, the most advanced mitigation chapter, REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), is the most controversial outside of the COP process.

REDD is intended to provide compensation to countries for not exploiting their forests. Companies and countries failing to reduce emissions would pay this compensation.

The Peruvian government wants this finalised in Lima but many civil society and indigenous groups oppose it. Large protest marches against REDD and the idea of putting a price on nature are very likely in Lima, Konstantinidis said.
“Political actors appear totally disconnected from real solutions to tackle global warming,” said Nnimmo Bassey of the No Redd in Africa Network and former head of Friends of the Earth International.

REDD is a “financial conspiracy between rich nations and corporations” happy to trade cash for doing little to reduce their carbon emissions, Bassey said in an interview.

The only way to stop this “false solution” is for a broad alliance of social movements who take to the streets of Lima, he said.

The adaptation pillar is mainly about finance and technology transfer to help poorer countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. A special Green Climate Fund was set up this year to channel money but is not yet operational.

At COP 15, rich countries said they would provide funding that would reach 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 in exchange for lower emissions reductions. Contributions in 2013 were only 110 million dollars.

Promises made by Germany and Sweden in 2014 amount to nearly two billion dollars, however, payments will be made over a number of years. It is also not clear how much will be new money rather than previously allocated foreign assistance funding.

“Countries need to make new financial commitments in Lima. This includes emerging economies like China and Brazil,” said Konstantinidis.

Loss and damage is the third pillar. It was only agreed to in the dying hours of COP 19 last year in Warsaw, Poland. This pillar is intended to help poor countries cope with current and future economic and non-economic losses resulting from the impacts of climate change.

This pillar is the least developed and will not be completed until after the Paris deadline.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Huge boulders have been used to protect Jamaica's Palisadoes road which connects Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport. The road was previously blocked by storm surges. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Nov 10 2014 (IPS)

As the clock counts down to the last major climate change meeting of the year, before countries must agree on a definitive new treaty in 2015, a senior United Nations official says members of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS) “need to be innovative and think outside the box” if they hope to make progress on key issues.

Dr. Arun Kashyap, U.N. resident coordinator and UNDP resident representative for Jamaica, said AOSIS has a significant agenda to meet at the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Lima, Peru, and “it would be its creativity that would facilitate success in arriving at a consensus on key issues.”"We think that if we walk away it will send a strong signal. It is the first time that we have ever attempted such type of an action, but we strongly believe that the need for having a new agreement is of such significance that that is what we would be prepared to do.” -- Jamaica’s lead climate negotiator, Clifford Mahlung

Kashyap cited the special circumstances of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and their compelling need for adaptation and arriving at a viable mechanism to address Loss and Damage while having enhanced access to finance, technology and capacity development.

“A common agreed upon position that is acceptable across the AOSIS would empower the climate change division (in all SIDS) and reinforce its mandate to integrate implementation of climate change activities in the national development priorities,” Kashyap told IPS.

At COP17, held in Durban, South Africa, governments reached a new agreement to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases. They decided that the agreement with legal form would be adopted at COP21 scheduled for Paris in 2015, and parties would have until 2020 to enact domestic legislation for their ratification and entry into force of the treaty.

Decisions taken at COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, mandated the 195 parties to start the process for the preparation and submission of “Nationally determined Contributions”. These mitigation commitments are “applicable to all” and will be supported both for preparing a report of the potential activities and their future implementation.

The report should be submitted to the Secretariat during the first quarter of 2015 so as to enable them to be included in the agreement.

AOSIS is an inter-governmental organisation of low-lying coastal and small island countries established in 1990. Its main purpose is to consolidate the voices of Small Island Developing States to address global warming.

In October, Ngedikes “Olai” Uludong, the lead negotiator for AOSIS, outlined priorities ahead of the Dec. 1-12 talks.

She said the 2015 agreement must be a legally binding protocol, applicable to all; ambition should be in line with delivering a long term global goal of limiting temperature increases to below 1.5 degrees and need to consider at this session ways to ensure this; mitigation efforts captured in the 2015 agreement must be clearly quantifiable so that we are able to aggregate the efforts of all parties.

Uludong also called for further elaboration of the elements to be included in the 2015 agreement; the identification of the information needed to allow parties to present their intended nationally determined contributions in a manner that facilitates clarity, transparency, and understanding relative to the global goal; and she said finance is a fundamental building block of the 2015 agreement and should complement other necessary means of implementation including transfer of technology and capacity building.

Sixteen Caribbean countries are members of AOSIS. They have been meeting individually to agree on country positions ahead of a meeting in St. Kitts Nov. 19-20 where a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) strategy for the world climate talks is expected to be finalised.

But Jamaica has already signaled its intention to walk out of the negotiations if rich countries are not prepared to agree on a deal which will reduce the impacts of climate change in the Caribbean.

“We have as a red line with respect to our position that if the commitments with respect to reducing greenhouse gases are not of a significant and meaningful amount, then we will not accept the agreement,” Jamaica’s lead climate negotiator, Clifford Mahlung, told IPS.

“We will not accept a bad agreement,” he said, explaining that a bad agreement is one that does not speak adequately to reducing greenhouse gas emissions or the provision of financing for poorer countries. It is not yet a CARICOM position, he said, but an option that Jamaica would support if the group was for it.

“We don’t have to be part of the consensus, but we can just walk away from the agreement. We think that if we walk away it will send a strong signal. It is the first time that we have ever attempted such type of an action, but we strongly believe that the need for having a new agreement is of such significance that that is what we would be prepared to do,” Mahlung added.

The Lima talks are seen as a bridge to the agreement in 2015.

SIDS are hoping to get developed countries to commit to keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, but are prepared to accept a 2.0 degrees Celsius rise at the maximum. This will mean that countries will have to agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Jamaica’s climate change minister described the December COP20 meeting as “significant,” noting that “the decisions that are expected to be taken in Lima, will, no doubt, have far-reaching implications for the decisions that are anticipated will be taken next year during COP 21 in Paris, when a new climate agreement is expected to be formulated.”

Pickersgill said climate change will have devastating consequences on a global scale even if there are significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is clear to me that the scientific evidence that climate change is a clear and present danger is now even stronger. As such, the need for us to mitigate and adapt to its impacts is even greater, and that is why I often say, with climate change, we must change.”

But Pickersgill said there are several challenges for Small Island Developing States like Jamaica to adapt to climate change.

“These include our small size and mountainous terrain, which limits where we can locate critical infrastructure such as airports as well as population centres, and the fact that our main economic activities are conducted within our coastal zone, including tourism, which is a major employer, as well as one of our main earners of foreign exchange,” he said.

“The agriculture sector, and in particular, the vulnerability of our small farmers who are affected by droughts or other severe weather events such as tropical storms and hurricanes, and our dependency on imported fossil fuels to power our energy sources and drive transportation.”

Pickersgill told IPS on the sidelines of Jamaica’s national consultation, held here on Nov. 6, that his country’s delegation will, through their participation, work towards the achievement of a successful outcome for the talks.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at destinydlb@gmail.com

The new U.S. effort to reduce carbon emissions sends a powerful signal to the business and energy sectors that the country is moving away from coal and embracing energy efficiency and renewables, says the WWF’s Samantha Smith. Credit: Rennett Stowe/CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 3 2014 (IPS)

New efforts by the U.S. to reduce its carbon emissions are being welcomed around the world. On Monday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants 25 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

This “is the strongest action ever taken by the U.S. government to fight climate change,” said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s Climate Action Commissioner.

Hedegaard said it’s an important step for “a president really investing politically in fighting climate change.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time to see who will be the first through the climate action doorway,” said the Seychelles Islands Ambassador Ronald Jumeau, who is a spokesperson for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The very existence of many of these low-lying islands is threatened by sea level rise from a warming climate.

As the largest carbon emitter historically it’s important for the U.S. to take the lead, Jumeau told IPS.

“Now its time for other major carbon-emitting countries to step up,” he said. This is especially true for Japan, Canada and Australia, as well as China and India. “Small islands states are moving quickly to reduce our emissions and we cheer anyone who joins in.”

Several Pacific island countries hope to have their electricity from 100 percent renewable energy by 2020. Just last year the tiny country of Palau near New Zealand became the first nation to achieve this.

Other countries have also stepped up. China recently increased its renewable energy target and has banned new coal power plants in many urban regions. Just two weeks ago, Mexico increased its ambitious renewable energy target from 15 to 25 percent by 2018.
The U.S. announcement is one of a series of recent steps by a few countries to reduce emissions, said Samantha Smith, the leader of the WWF Climate and Energy Initiative.

“This is very encouraging and ought to inspire others to act,” Smith told IPS in an interview from Oslo.

In taking a strong public stance on emissions, the U.S. is sending a powerful signal to the business and energy sectors that the country is moving away from coal and embracing energy efficiency and renewables, Smith said.

“There are already more jobs and better jobs in the U.S. solar industry than in coal,” she added.

A recent study found that employing energy efficiency alone would create more than 600,000 skilled jobs, cut air pollution, fight climate change and result in 17 billion dollars in energy savings.

Jumeau said many countries will closely watch to see if the EPA can actually deliver on its promise given the contentious politics in the U.S.

The coal industry and its supporters in the Republican party will try to block the EPA, but they’re unlikely to be successful, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC.

While the EPA action on power plants is a positive sign by the U.S., it’s not ambitious enough to prevent global warming from rising well beyond 2 degrees C, Meyer told IPS.

New and larger commitments to cut carbon are what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants leaders to bring the Climate Summit 2014 in New York City in September.

“Ban Ki-moon has made it clear he wants commitments not speeches in New York. But it’s not clear what will happen,” said Meyer.

The European Union is the leader in cutting emissions – but it could and needs to do far more, said Smith.

“The EU has already reached its 2020 target but is unwilling to go further, when it could do more on renewables and energy efficiency,” she said.

She hopes the U.S. announcement will encourage the EU to be more ambitious in the run-up to the new global climate treaty to be finalised in Paris in 2015. Short-term reduction targets like 2020 are very important from an energy investment perspective, since they spell out where a country or region is going, she said.

Equally important is the scientific reality that carbon emissions must peak before 2020 to have a reasonable chance of staying below 2 degree C of global warming.

Jumeau says his colleagues at AOSIS are cautiously optimistic. They sense a change in the wind regarding public concern about global warming.

“Everyone around the world is suffering and its getting worse. The public is beginning to notice and see the impacts support scientists’ warnings.”