• ‘Decent work’ & strengthened role for ‘loss & damage’ among draft negotiating text additions thus far
• Additions continue through Tuesday morning; consolidation work to begin in afternoon
• End of expert consultation process affirms need for major increases in climate action
Talks on pre-2020 climate action begin Tuesday; our partners push for focus renewable energy, energy efficiency and fossil fuel subsidy reform focus
After a strong start to the UN climate talks in Geneva on Sunday, Monday seemed to move at an even more dizzying pace. With each breath, government delegates continued to suggest additions to the document they’ll use as a basis for negotiations this year; further ballooning a text that started at 38 pages Sunday morning. With general objectives and mitigation behind them, they started the morning adding to the slate of options on adaptation and loss and damage. The afternoon was filled with a rapid fire display of additional ideas on finance, technology transfer, capacity building and transparency measures.
A larger negotiating text could complicate the path to a new global climate agreement in Paris, but many of additions are in line with efforts our partners have long pushed for. The International Trade Union Confederation, for example, celebrated the inclusion of ‘a just transition of the workforce that creates decent work and quality jobs;’ and developing countries suggested a number of additions that align with our partners’ efforts to the address loss and damage incurred by climate change we can’t adapt to. Before getting through the remainder of the Lima Call for Climate Action as planned, co-chairs stopped the session in time for delegates to join a briefing on the support available for their government’s intended national contributions to the 2015 deal.
Monday also saw the last presentations in a three-year process that brought in experts to assess and discuss the progress made against long-term goals agreed in the climate talks thus far, as well as the adequacy of those goals. The dialogues this week and over the last three years affirmed that limiting global warming to 2ºC is still possible; but only if we see a massive additional boost in climate action on the mitigation side. They also affirmed that even at 2ºC, we’ll need massive boosts in our capacity to adapt to and manage the losses and damages incurred by climate change.
Much of this week is focused on building a climate regime for the post-2020 world, but Tuesday morning will see some negotiators pivot to pre-2020 efforts. Discussions will focus on continuing a series of technical expert meetings to better understand the most scalable and high-impact options for putting the world on track to limit warming to 2º or less. Our partners closely following this process singled out renewable energy, energy efficiency and fossil fuel subsidy reform as the most promising issues for a 2015 focus - specifically, picking up where last year’s efforts fell short: making actionable links to the financial and technical support needed to ‘get the gears moving’.
While increasing pre-2020 ambition gets well deserved attention, governments will continue to work their way through additions to the remainder of the Lima Call for Climate Action. After that, the updated agenda for Tuesday afternoon has a 3-hour block set aside with a one word session title: ‘Streamlining.’
News, links & useful grist that caught our eye
Our Negotiator Trackers are busting out visual analysis of the additions to the Lima Call for Climate Action, starting with Objectives and Mitigation. Look out for more in the coming days. They’re also getting some attention for an infographic laying out the path from Geneva to Paris.
As talks continue their focus on options for elements of the new global climate agreement, our partners and peers are digging into the potential role of carbon markets, human rights, and international aviation and shipping emissions.
Deadly flooding Malawi, devastating floods in Indonesia, and Greece and the increasing toll of drought in Brazil remind us of the importance of climate change resilience and responding to the losses and damages from climate changes that we're unable to adapt to. Nitin Sethi shares his take on how the issue featured in the talks thus far.
The outgoing chair of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri wants the organization to take an official role in assessing countries' pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in totting up whether they add up to enough to meet global climate change targets.
A new report says that rich nations provided nearly $15 billion between 2003 and 2013 to fund exports of coal-fired power plant and coal mining technology, defying calls to end subsidies for the most polluting of the fossil fuels. News comes on the heels of a push by our partners urging G20 Finance ministers - meeting in Turkey to discuss the group's 2015 agenda - to speed the phaseout of fossil fuels, and increasing buzz about Global Divestment Day events planned for later this week.
Resources
In addition to Daily Tck emails, you can follow Geneva’s play-by-play updates and dig into the issues through the lens of Adopt a Negotiator’s trackers on the ground.
Our friends at the Climate Action Network International plan to publish daily ECO newsletters laying out their case to negotiators.
IISD’s reporting service will publish daily summaries and photos here.
It looks like the hashtags to track are #UNFCCC and #ADP2015. We’ll join the conversation via @tcktcktck and @adoptnegotiator.
We'll also keep you abreast of developments in the wider world of climate activism and action at tcktcktck.org.
The Global Call for Climate Action is a network of more than 450 leading environmental, development and faith-based NGOs, youth groups and trade unions calling for a fair, ambitious and binding climate change agreement and a low-carbon future. Learn more at tcktcktck.org.
I'm Joshua Wiese, Project Director for Global Call for Climate Action, where I oversee GCCA's Adopt a Negotiator and Fresh Air projects. Fresh Air is a GCCA initiative that connects climate and energy bloggers to relevant work being done by GCCA partner organizations.
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The 2014 People's Climate March accelerated civic momentum and successfully demanded world leaders to reach an adequate and just treaty at the December 2015 UN Climate Talks in Paris.
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