21/11/2021

(The Conversation) COP26 Left The World With A Climate To-Do List: Here Are 5 Things To Watch For In 2022

The Conversation - 

John Kerry, the U.S. presidential special envoy for climate, surrounded by other negotiators during COP26. UNFCCC, CC BY-NC-SA

Author
is Dean of the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
How much the world achieved at the Glasgow climate talks – and what happens now – depends in large part on where you live.

In island nations that are losing their homes to sea level rise, and in other highly vulnerable countries, there were bitter pills to swallow after global commitments to cut emissions fell far short of the goal to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F).

For large middle-income countries, like India and South Africa, there were signs of progress on investments needed for developing clean energy.

In the developed world, countries still have to internalize, politically, that bills are coming due – both at home and abroad – after decades of delaying action on climate change. The longer the delay, the more difficult the transition will be.

There were also signs of hope as coalitions of companies, governments and civil society and indigenous peoples groups forced progress on issues such as stopping deforestation, cutting methane, ending coal use and boosting zero-emissions vehicles. Now, those promises must be acted upon.

As a former senior U.N. official, I’ve been involved in the climate negotiations for several years. Here are five key elements to watch over the coming year as countries move forward on their promises.

Bending the curve to 1.5°C

Going into the Glasgow summit, countries’ commitments had put the world on a trajectory of warming about 2.9°C this century, well beyond the 1.5°C goal and into levels of warming that will bring dangerous climate impacts.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in the first days (much to the surprise of Indian observers) that India would reach net zero emissions by 2070 and generate 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030 helped lower that trajectory to 2.4°C.

Countries agreed to return for the next round of climate talks in November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with stronger commitments to put the world on track for 1.5°C.

The Climate Action Tracker estimates the global average temperature increase based on national policies. New Climate Institute and Climate Analytics

That turns the spotlight back on national action. China reminded everyone, while throwing shade at the U.S., that goals must be backed with plans for implementation.

U.S. Cabinet members and Congressional leaders had much to say in Glasgow about being “back,” after the previous administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. Yet they had little to offer in terms of the U.S. share of the finance, and the world cast a worried eye over its continued partisan politics.

More South Africa deals, please

While all countries are important for reaching the world’s climate goals, some are more important than others.

Countries that are high emitters and heavily dependent on coal will be a focus of international attention in the coming months, not just to phase down coal but importantly to fund a just transition to green sources of energy and the necessary electricity infrastructure.

The poster child for this approach is South Africa, where a presidential commission has worked for three years to develop a just transition plan and has been able to attract US$8.5 billion from the U.K., the EU, the U.S. and others to help them execute on it. That, coupled with guarantees and other financial aid that could help draw further private investment, could become a replicable model.

The key was national ownership. In the year ahead, look for plans to come together in Indonesia and Vietnam and other countries needing to fast forward away from coal.

Getting climate finance flowing

Many developing countries already have national platforms to deliver on their commitments, but throughout Glasgow’s conference halls, officials complained that finance wasn’t flowing to help them succeed.

This isn’t just a climate finance problem. Many countries are also facing economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic and have chafed at the way international financial institutions fail to address issues of access to finance and trade.

Advanced economies didn’t come to Glasgow ready to provide even the $100 billion a year in finance promised a decade ago, which shrank the landing zone for agreement on all issues.

The Chinese calculate the value of growth lost through a few measures, such as floods and heat. Unsurprisingly it amounts to trillions of dollars. It may be a useful exercise whenever a government balks at the “cost” of climate action.

In the end, governments agreed to reach the $100 billion annual climate finance target within the next two years and agreed that adaptation funding should double. But with the U.N. Environment Programme estimating that adaptation funds will need to quadruple by 2030 from today’s $70 billion, there’s a long way to go.

Tuvalu Finance Minister Seve Paeniu gave an emotional speech as the conference ended.

The Glasgow Climate Pact also criticized the traditional channels of public funds that set the conditions for finance to flow, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Look for G7 and G20 countries, the largest shareholders of these institutions, to examine how they can be managed differently to respond to the climate emergency. All eyes are on Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, current president of the G20 and an experienced central banker.

Actions could range from bolstering the Climate Investment Funds, managed by the World Bank, and loosening the terms and conditions of the IMF’s proposed management of the reallocation of special drawing rights, to incentives to leverage more private funds and take more risk.

Finance pledges and cries of ‘greenwashing’

In the first week of Glasgow, the titans of the financial industry heralded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero – the commitment by financial institutions representing $130 trillion in assets to accelerate the transition to a net-zero emissions economy.

The shifts within financial markets away from exposure to carbon emissions was palpable. But without more detail, the announcement attracted cries of “greenwashing.”

Organizers of the alliance will need to work hard to hold members to account, and throw out those still underwriting the coal industry, for example.

The principle of getting everyone pledged and in the tent and then making them improve has been used before, for example, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative.

But this only works with transparency, and buried among the press releases was their report that, of the advertised $57 trillion of the initiative’s assets under management, only an estimated 35% is actually in line with net zero.

The U.N. secretary-general announced an expert group to propose clear standards for companies and others making net zero commitments, partly in response to furor around greenwashing. That group is expected to report back in 2022.

At the heart of Glasgow was a new seriousness around transparency, credibility, integrity and accountability. Watch this unfold this coming year.

The third leg of a wobbly stool: Loss and damage

Climate action is a three-legged stool – mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.

Loss and damage was mentioned an unprecedented 12 times in the final Glasgow texts, but without commitments to funding or mechanisms to secure funding. Loss and damage, or reparations, can be understood this way: you broke it (or endangered it), you pay for it.

But, afraid of lawsuits in international courts – which the U.S. does not belong to – or afraid of the costs, developed countries have opposed progress on the issue in recent years.

Developing countries left Glasgow disappointed, but there was no escaping the debate. Watch for a design of a mechanism to help pay for loss and damage and plans to start funding it. With the next year’s U.N. climate conference in Africa, this will move center stage.

There’s a Scottish proverb, “fools look to tomorrow, wise men [sic] use tonight.” There were wise people in Glasgow, and fools too. But there’s not a night to lose in the year ahead.

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(AU Monash University) Including Oceans In Climate Talks Remains Piecemeal And Inconsistent, At Best

Monash University - Sali Bache


Author
Dr Sali Bache is the international policy lead at ClimateWorks, with a focus on the Asia Pacific region. She is involved in policy analysis and development, and impact and opportunity scoping for climate and blue carbon work in the region.
To date, archipelagic Southeast Asian and South Pacific island countries, including Australia, have led the way in seeking to include oceans as part of all discussions regarding climate change challenges and solutions.

This is understandable. With their surrounding ocean territories greater than their land mass, these island states are already experiencing the impacts of our changing climate. But this isn’t just a regional concern. Oceans cover more than 70% of our planet, so why aren’t they central to climate talks?

Mounting evidence reveals the substantial impact climate change has on oceans and marine ecosystems. Across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, this includes rising sea levels, erosion and coastal inundation.

Sandbags on a beach in Fiji.

The region is already recognised as the most disaster-prone in the world, with flooding, storm surges and landslides killing, on average, 43,000 people in the Asia-Pacific every year. There’s also evidence of climate change intensifying and prolonging extreme weather events such as tsunamis, as well as contributing to the loss of marine habitats and species – including key human food sources – through ocean acidification.

In an area that’s home to two-thirds of the world’s hungry (nearly 500 million people) and relies on the ocean for 20% of its protein, this change is catastrophic.

Sea-level rise (SLR) in the western Pacific Ocean has been increasing at a rate two to three times the global average, resulting in almost 30 centimetres of net rise since 1990. And for some areas within Asia, an increase in sea levels of just 30 centimetres (the length of a school ruler) can result in 45 metres of land incursion and erosion.

The Asia-Pacific is particularly vulnerable to SLR due to its topography, with 97% of South Pacific islands and half of Asia residing in low-lying coastal areas. The risk is exacerbated by socioeconomic conditions impacting communities’ ability to cope with, or adapt to, such climate-generated change.

Countries such as Bangladesh, where residents are attempting to adapt their livelihoods to accommodate rising seas and increased salinity, will within the next 30 years see the migration of 200,000 people from the coastal delta area every year.

Indonesia plans to move its capital to Borneo, in light of recent dangerous flooding and dire predictions of much worse to come.

In the Pacific, some countries without safe areas to relocate have embarked on the preemptive acquisition of land in other states. This includes Kiribati, whose former president has purchased a large plot in Fiji as a refuge, should his atoll homeland become uninhabitable.

The other side to the oceans equation – one of opportunity
Oceans also offer a substantial part of the solution to climate change. In fact, ocean-based mitigation could provide more than 20% of the emissions reductions needed to keep warming below the now widely accepted 1.5°C target, through actions including changes to maritime industry practices, offshore renewable energy generation, human food production, and consumption shifts to sustainable “blue foods” and “blue carbon” sinks.

This is of particular significance to the Asia-Pacific. In relation to the shipping industry, more than 60% of cargo traffic passes through Asian ports, while the Pacific Island states are heavily reliant on cargo for many of their needs, and the Marshall Islands is the third-largest vessel registry in the world.

Similarly, the region is significant in regard to blue carbon, the South Pacific having defined itself as a “blue ocean” continent with an ocean territory of more than 30.5 million km².
The Asia-Pacific region also dominates in terms of coastal blue carbon ecosystems. For example, in regard to mangroves, Indonesia has the greatest stock in the world, with Australia coming in second – at 17% and 10%, respectively. These and other blue carbon coastal ecosystems such as tidal marshes and seagrasses act as impressive “vacuums” for carbon dioxide, storing more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests.

However, oceans inclusion in climate talks remains piecemeal and inconsistent.

In 2006, UNFCCC greenhouse gas emission inventory guidelines were revised to include “offshore areas over which the country has jurisdiction”. However, the guidelines were inconsistent in their methodology for allocating emissions from different maritime sectors, leaving ships and aircraft engaged in international transport as external to the scope, allocating waterborne navigation emissions on international trips as split between country of departure and arrival, and fishing vessels emissions based upon the country delivering the fuel, with military fuel use categorised under “non-specified”.

Other elements weren’t extended beyond the shoreline until 2013, when the IPCC wetland supplement provided methodologies for coastal wetland sinks and sources. Unlike on land, however, their inclusion is optional.

Momentum for the inclusion of oceans in climate talks began to grow in 2014, with recognition of the critical role of the UNFCCC process in the UN General Assembly annual resolution on the Oceans and the Law of the Sea, and the IPCC in its AR5 Synthesis Report stating that climate change and acidification was altering the ocean at an unprecedented rate.

With the omission of oceans and coasts as part of the Paris Agreement negotiating text, 2015 marked a turning point. The efforts of some states to have oceans included in climate data and ambition then escalated, aided by 2015 COP co-president Fiji – a vocal advocate for ocean-climate linkages.

Australia, too, has participated in coalitions and in other forums with other countries in the region, contemplating the impact of climate change on oceans and considering potential mitigation measures. Of influence has been the High Level Panel on a Sustainable Ocean Economy, of which Indonesia and Palau are also members, and the Because the Ocean Initiative, which additionally includes the Marshall Islands, New Zealand and Singapore.

Mobilisation of the ocean community

A series of initiatives, including the re-emergence of Oceans Day at the 2015 COP, saw the major mobilisation of the ocean community, which has since sought to foster political momentum for oceans engagement. The first “Because the Ocean” declaration urged the creation of an Ocean Action Plan under the UNFCCC, and the following year a second declaration called for the inclusion of oceans in national reporting of emissions, and pledged reduction contributions.

These important steps and the ongoing mobilisation of action led to the first inclusion of oceans in the UNFCCC output document at COP25 in 2019, and the coining of the title the “Blue COP”.

In the intervening years, this prompted an Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue. To herald the COP26 another “Blue COP”, the world needed to step up in its ocean-climate commitment. In the event, the Glasgow Climate Pact did again acknowledge the oceans. It also committed to the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue becoming a permanent annual event, and to the consideration by UNFCCC bodies of how to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action into existing mandates and workplans”. 

While these are positive measures, they’re all UNFCCC-oriented, and at this stage require no action by state parties.
It remains today that we’re without systematic inclusion of the offshore in greenhouse gas inventories, and the range of other Paris Agreement instruments. Still, countries’ reporting areas aren’t aligned with the zones of sovereignty prescribed in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – the international treaty establishing a legal framework for maritime areas, protection and activities.

Given the magnitude of oceans’ impacts on both climate and emissions, such exclusions risk the integrity of the emissions data and activities that underpin our global climate efforts, as well as the health of the ocean itself.

Countries at COP26 had an opportunity to put ocean impacts and mitigation on the main stage. On the first day of the event, the Because the Ocean Initiative released a new declaration, calling for the systematic inclusion of oceans in UNFCCC and Paris Agreement processes, and enhanced ocean-climate action. 

Although a step in the right direction, the actual impact of the Glasgow Climate Pact will remain uncertain until the next COP, dependant on how the UNFCCC bodies respond to these directives, and what then occurs in regard to obligations of state parties and oceans resource allocation. 

The world is watching, but perhaps those in Southeast Asia and Pacific Island countries are watching most keenly.

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(The Conversation) The Ocean Is Essential To Tackling Climate Change. So Why Has It Been Neglected In Global Climate Talks?

The Conversation - 

Silas Baisch/Unsplash, CC BY

Climate change is commonly discussed as though it’s a uniquely atmospheric phenomena. But the crisis is deeply entwined with the ocean, and this has largely been neglected in international climate talks.

The latest international climate negotiations made some progress by, for the first time, anchoring oceans permanently into the multilateral climate change regime. But the Glasgow Climate Pact is still leagues from where it needs to be to adequately reflect the importance of oceans to our climate system.

Most countries have targets for land-based emissions – but there are no such targets for oceans. Yet the ocean plays a vital role in helping balance the conditions humans and most other species need to survive, while also offering a substantial part of the solution to stop the planet warming over the crucial limit of 1.5℃ this century.

So how can oceans help us tackle the climate crisis? And what progress has been made in international negotiations?

The ocean’s incredible potential

Since industrialisation, the ocean has absorbed 93% of human-generated heat and one-third of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂).

The consequences of this are profound, including the thermal expansion of water (the key cause of sea level rise), ocean acidification, deoxygenation (oxygen loss), and forcing marine life to redistribute to other places.

Alarmingly, this may one day lead the ocean to reverse its role as a carbon sink and release CO₂ back into the atmosphere, as its absorption ability declines.

Equally important is ocean-based climate mitigation, which could provide more than 20% of the emissions reductions needed for the 1.5℃ goal.

The shipping industry is responsible for about 3% of global emissions. Andy Li/Unsplash, CC BY

Crucially, we must see changes to maritime industries. The shipping industry alone has a similar carbon footprint to Germany – if shipping were a country it would be the world’s sixth-largest emitter. Although high on the International Maritime Organisation’s agenda, the decarbonisation of shipping still lacks adequate targets or processes.

Oceans can also provide climate-safe, sustainable food choices. Current food systems, such as emissions-intensive agriculture, fishing, and processed foods are responsible for one-third of global emissions. Considerable environmental (and health) benefits can be gained by shifting our diets to sustainable “blue foods”.

These include seafoods sourced from fisheries with sustainable management practices, such as avoiding overfishing and reducing carbon emissions. Markets and technologies should also be geared towards the large-scale production and consumption of aquatic plants such as seagrasses.

There’s also a wealth of opportunity in “blue carbon” – capturing CO₂ in the atmosphere by conserving and restoring marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes.

However, the success of nature-based solutions depends on a healthy ocean ecosystem. For example, there are emerging concerns around the impact of plastic pollution on plankton’s ability to absorb CO₂.

Conserving mangroves is an important way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Shutterstock

But perhaps the greatest impact would come from adopting offshore renewable energy. This has the potential to offer one-tenth of the emissions reductions we need to reach the 1.5℃ goal. The International Energy Agency has estimated offshore wind could power the world 18 times over its current consumption rate.

Climate talks are making slow progress

For more than a decade, the inclusion of oceans in climate talks has been piecemeal and inconsistent. Where they have been part of negotiations, including at COP26, talk has focused on the potential for coastal areas to adapt to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise, as first raised in international fora in 1989 by small island states.

The final COP26 agreement, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, made slight progress.

The pact recognised the importance of ensuring the ocean ecosystem’s integrity. It established the “the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue” as an annual process to strengthen ocean-based action. And it invited UNFCCC bodies to consider how to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action into existing mandates and workplans” and report back.
While these are positive measures, at this stage they don’t require action by parties. Therefore, they’re only a theoretical inclusion, not action-oriented.

We still lack national targets and clear, mandatory international requirements for countries to consider sinks, sources and activities beyond the shoreline in their climate planning and reporting.

Where COP26 did progress was its focus on whether ocean impacts and mitigation will finally be brought into the mainstream climate agenda.

For the first time in five years, a new “Because the Ocean” declaration was released, which calls for the systematic inclusion of the oceans in the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement process.

A delegate from Tuvalu, a Pacific Island nation facing the existential threat of sea level rise, speaks at COP26. EPA/ROBERT PE

What do we do now?

What’s now needed is a list of mandated requirements that ensure countries report on and take responsibility for climate impacts within their maritime territories.

But as COP26 president Alok Sharma said of the summit as a whole, it was a “fragile win”. We still lack any reference to consistency with existing mechanisms, such as the law of the sea convention or how funding will be allocated specifically to oceans.

As such, the actual impact of COP26 on the inclusion of oceans in climate action remains uncertain. It will depend on how the UNFCCC bodies respond to these directives, and their success in extending obligations to state parties.

Responding to the climate crisis means we need to stop pretending the ocean and atmosphere are separate. We must start including ocean action as a routine part of climate action.

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