Just a typical day at the COP

COP meetings can be overwhelming, even for those of us who have been coming for many years. There are many negotiating tracks that one can follow, a lot of jargon, and way too many acronyms. And just when you begin to learn the proverbial ropes, a new agreement or workstream comes along with another set of vocabularies to learn!

There are daily constituency meetings; my mornings typically start with the Research and Independent NGOs meeting since I serve on the RINGOs steering committee. It is a chance for participants to review what is going on in the various tracks that they are following; a "Cliffs Notes" version of what is progressing (or not). This is helpful for those who cannot be everywhere at once or who aren't inclined to sit through too many lengthy negotiations sessions that often move at a snail’s pace. At the end of these meetings, it is often a good time to check in with students from Moravian’s delegation. Today, the researchers from the U.S. – many of them representing the next generation of scientists and lawyers who will work in the environmental field – gathered to discuss an upcoming meeting with the U.S. delegation (i.e. from the State Department of the only country that is now publicly pulling away from the Paris Agreement). Oh, what an interesting conversation that will be!

Three women in STEM and from the Rocky Mountain Science and Sustainability Network

For those of us who are not policy wonks, there is much more than negotiations to follow. The side-events are a lot like going to a professional conference with panels and presentations on a wide range of topics. For instance, today happens to be “Business and Industry Day” at COP23. Yesterday was “Young and Future Generations Day.” Since we will be discussing corporate responses to climate change in our course soon, I ventured into a session entitled Transforming the Industry: The Case for Transparency and Ambition in Markets and NDCs. (See what I mean about jargon and acronyms?) The session was billed as a time to  

"Discuss the chances and challenges energy intensive industry is facing on the way to GHG-neutrality; Identify how the framework and instruments of the Paris Agreement can support industry on its way to become GHG-neutral by 2050; showcasing (inter)national initiatives that contribute thereto."

I listened to information about carbon pricing, the company Bosch’s story (or propaganda, depending on your perspective), the ability to purchase certificates (carbon offsets), and ways to become more energy efficiency. Yawn. The business world, like many scientists, needs to learn to be a bit less dull.

A typical session audience

Next, I was going to go to a session titled Hacking climate change: The digital future of climate leadership, innovation and impact sponsored by Microsoft and interestingly the South Pole Group! The room was standing room only, so I moved to another session entitled Achieving Socially and Ecologically Beneficial Renewable Energy Systems through Community Engagement in part because one of the sponsors was the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (Planet Pledge initiative). The content is worthy of a separate blog post, but in short, the session was about how the demand for rare metals to support renewable energy technology and the computerized energy efficiency systems is creating new ecological destruction and having negative social consequences for many in the developing world (think conflict minerals). The problem of climate change is complex, but so are potential solutions.

Besides the negotiations and side events, many countries have pavilions where they offer their own programming along with some cultural flare, and there are countless exhibitions from NGOs, universities, think tanks, and other organizations. Having come to these events for many years, I enjoy wandering around reconnecting with interesting friends from around the world, including people I met at the community-based adaptation conference in Uganda last summer from Bangladesh and Zanzibar, representatives from Mediators Beyond Borders International, faculty from other campuses, etc. I had two back-to-back conversations with people who had been in Svalbard this past summer! It is, ironically, a network of friends with a high carbon footprint from travel. Tonight, I will have dinner with a French glaciologist who studies in Scotland and does research in polar regions. And that is a typical day at a COP meeting: exhausting, but never dull.

Some scenes from around the COP:

 

Yes, those are lights made from hollowed out fish!

The last 4 images are from the Fiji Pavilion - the official host of COP23 even if we are in Bonn

Post-15 Agenda and UNFCCC Draft Agreements: Can They Be Friends?

After a marathon session at the UN in New York last week for the 65th Annual United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) Session, the world is now one step closer to a to-do list to end poverty that includes one of its main drivers: climate change. 

In the case of the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC, the chances for their goals to compliment the other could easily dismantle and confuse global negotiations for the issues surrounding climate change, sustainable water, energy, and food scarcity.  Can these two Draft Agreements work together to integrate and not desaturate the necessary components each brings to the table?

The Post-15 Agenda is an answer to the Millennium Development Goals...and should guide the UNFCCC roadmap to Paris 2015.  

 Deadlines. Deadlines. Deadlines.

From August 27th to the 29th at the #UNNGO2014 65th DPI NGO conference invited over 920 NGOS to comment on the final version of the Post-15 Agenda. In 2015, the UNFCCC COP 21 in Paris and the launch of the Post-2015 Agenda will culminate within months of each other. This Roundtable discussed the interlinkages between both processes and the benefits as well as the of drawbacks of having two separate tracks in the medium and long terms. Terms like Low-carbon development, adaptation, disaster risk reduction and finance were thrown around. 

The Post-2015 process is to create a transformative agenda that is meant to usher us into a new era of sustainable development and in harmony with nature, that is rights based and ensures no-one is left behind. 

Cross-synthesis was a theme hammered by the panelists, but the articulation of that word failed to show the audience examples of how the policies could co-exist and not cancel the other out. 

Moderating the panel, Lina Dabbagh, Post-2015 Officer, CAN International immediately stated that climate change affects every sector from sustainable water, energy.  This is an important step. Citing Climate Change for the first time after the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) failed to include it as the driver of social poverty, the Final Draft of the Post-15 Agenda gave Climate Change a number: Goal 13  The panel suggested that its inclusion is the key issue to ensuring sustainability in the future. While there could have been a fierce debate about one developmental agenda against the other, overall the panelists stayed on the fence about the conflicting status of the declarations.  

H.E. Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velásquez, Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations, kicked off the panel discussion citing how Peru has already accomplished their MDG's for targeting poverty levels and other targets in his own country.  Stating that the "Issue of inequality is important, we want to address social exclusion and inequalities" he set the tone of the discussion. Peru is the next host country for the final UNFCCC meetings before Paris in 2015.  Velásquez believes that the efforts need to be more aggressive and drafting resolutions that use technology transfers first and financing second will be the successful components of each plan. He emphasized building social capital before financial capital. 

No one argued. 

It seems that reversing individualistic approaches to resource security by identifying opportunities for integration and identifying existing trade-offs will result in better policy recommendations for both draft agreements. 

Velásquez made the link between poverty and climate change.  What are these linkages exactly?

Dork Sahagian, an IPCC Nobel Prize winner and professor of Earth Sciences at Lehigh University suggested we think alongside the fabled words of John F. Kennedy "Ask not what climate change will do to the poorer populations but ask what the economic development will do to 7 billion people. Moving away from fossil fuel development in the post-15 agenda is not a current development goal and is necessary, said Dr. Sahagian,

"otherwise the sustainability goals are in direct conflict with our Climate Change goals."

Additionally, Nicholas Nuttall, Creative writer for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and Director of Communications & Outreach, UNFCCC suggested that much of the development targets and discussion that are central to Sustainable Development Goals in the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC should be to act as opportunity multipliers.  The division between the private and civil society sector is a huge obstacle. He articulated the issue between the policies well. Consider what the RIO+20 was asking for: a new indicator for process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that was not just limited to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) valuation. He asked the only worthwhile question in a panel circulating in a maelstrom around the possibilities for collaboration How can the SDG's support a legally binding process?  

Which process will be codified 

into international law first,

if any?  

Elenita “Neth” Dano, Asia Director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) remarked, that we must first raise awareness about the issues we wish to combat, this is key to a more sustainable global development agenda. SDGs should act as enablers. Post-2015 draft agreements should be a development agenda. UNFCCC is the driver. Dano argued that we have to look beyond SDGs 2013, because they talk only about food, water and health. However, the success of solving those conflicts builds upon the capacity on countries to adapt/mitigate to climate change in relation to those SDGs.

François Gave, Counsellor for Development and Sustainable Development, Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations debated that Climate Change is still politically charged and polarized. It tends to be a left-winged and right-winged debate.  He called for a broad-based world consensus on climate change and action. He outlined those ideas below:

1. Incentives (Carbon pricing) Is on the road map to Lima and Paris.  The September 21st, Climate Summit will offer a global schematic that will be addressed in Peru this December at COP 20.
2. Building confidence and addressing the free-rider problem through rules, transparency and monitoring at the private and civilian level.
3. Perceptions. The language barrier between science and public information is not being addressed.

If we are to illustrate how awareness is the key to driving dialogue, development draft agreements like the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC as well as others across the globe are mirroring much of the dialogue from this roundtable, and we are slowly learning that integration is a must.

The main takeaways from this roundtable is that only through collaboration, adaptation, and dissemination will sustainability be ensured in our development goals.  It is only a matter of time before further integrated dialogue on each sectors’ development needs eliminates the separation of climate change from sustainability goals and unites them as dependent on the success of the other.

I know what you are all thinking... we know this already?

Exactly.  Join the Call to Action.  See you in NYC for the Climate Summit. 

There can be no Social Justice without Environmental Justice.