BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - The demand to tackle conflict of interest within the UNFCCC has over the years been raised by several actors including governments and civil society.
However, to date, progress has been slow, notably, due to some cosy relationships formed between politics and the fossil fuel sector lobbyists.
It is for this reason that a global coalition of civil society groups is calling for a strong conflict of interest policy for the UNFCCC to decisively deal with the challenge.
The coalition, supported by the European Parliament has released a report highlighting revolving doors between the fossil fuel industry and high level politicians, ministers, regulators, and advisors.
According to the study, titled “Revolving doors and the fossil fuel industry,” carried out in 13 European countries, finds that failure to deal with conflict of interest by the EU is due to cosy relationships built up with the fossil fuel sector over the years, and calls for the adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy that would avoid the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel industry on the international climate change negotiations.
“There is a revolving door between politics and the fossil fuel lobby all across Europe,” said Max Andersson, Member of the European Parliament, at the Bonn Climate Talks. “It’s not just a handful of cases—it is systematic. The fossil fuel industry has an enormous economic interest in delaying climate action and the revolving door between politics and the fossils fuel lobby is a serious cause for alarm.”
According to Andersson, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming to as close as 1.5 degrees as possible, there is need to clamp down on conflict of interest to stop coal, gas and oil from leaving “their dirty fingerprints over our climate policy.”
He says European governments should support the call for a common sense conflict of interest policy so that the next COP can deliver an outcome that will put the world on the road towards a climate in balance.
And adding his voice to the debate, Augustine Njamshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), believes fossil fuel lobbyists have both a direct and indirect influence on climate policy.
Njamshi says the lack of ambition from developed parties in terms of emission cuts as well as provision of finance for developing parties is a result of bad influence from big polluters.
“For instance, in my opinion, delayed climate action, in particular, climate finance for African countries, is indirectly linked to big polluter influence,” said Njamshi. “They have a lot to lose if money is made available for countries to carry out their climate actions because their businesses depend on the current state of affairs.”
Meanwhile, Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory argued for strong advocacy to win the battle against big polluters having a field day at the UNFCCC negotiations.
“Strong advocacy and policy on conflict of interest should be adopted or else, the interests of fossil fuel sector will continue to have huge influence on climate policy,” said Sabido.
The conclusion of the report is that the revolving door phenomenon is systematic and widespread, as the study revealed at least 88 cases of revolving doors between ministers, advisors, regulators and politicians.
A further disturbing finding is that there is lack of adequate legislation to ensure that climate-policy making is not unduly influenced be vested interests, and where legislation exists, it is not properly applied.
The CSO coalition has therefore called for urgent action by interested parties to the UNFCCC to save climate policy from what they have called dirty fingerprints of big polluters.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - Agriculture is the mainstay of most developing country economies. Ironically, they are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts through extreme weather events such as drought, floods, landslides, storm surge, and soil erosion, affecting their predominantly rain-fed agricultural productivity and production.
In consideration of this vulnerability of agricultural systems to climate change, developing party negotiators had been pushing for it to be considered as a stand-alone work programme at the negotiating table.
And the push finally paid off at COP 23 where decision 4/CP.23 on the "Koronivia joint work on agriculture" was adopted, paving way for issues related to Agriculture to be addressed taking into consideration the vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change and approaches to addressing food security.
However, while this was a milestone, African civil society groups still want more ambition on Agriculture considering its importance to African countries in relation to adaptation, as most countries depend on agriculture for livelihood.
“Noting the significance of Agriculture in Africa, the decision on Agriculture during UNFCCC-COP 23 was a big milestone,” said Mithika Mwenda, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) Secretary General. “We caution our African governments however, to urgently ensure that there is a joint work plan for Agriculture in ensuring that it receives the required means of implementation.”
According to Mithika, further attention should be paid to the type of Agriculture being promoted, saying Africa is not interested in industrial agriculture as practiced by developed countries but rather, promoting resilience of smallholder farmers.
“Our interest is to promote resilience to Agriculture, the context in Africa is how do we support that smallholder farmer, that pastoralist whose cows are dying due to drought every time, so we are talking about; how do we now change that, so it’s important that we look at it from this context,” explained Mwenda at the on-going SB48 Climate Talks in Bonn.
In fact, the African civil society is linking agriculture to loss and damage, another long-standing issue that developing parties have been pushing at the negotiating table.
The argument is that developing countries and Africa, in particular, continues to suffer enormous economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts. Coupled with un-costed social losses due to climate induced displacement of persons triggering conflicts, the African group is dismayed to keep hearing that the answer to loss and damage is insurance—a concept which they believe is a far-fetched dream in Africa.
“Insurance works out in developed countries but not in developing countries especially in Africa, where the concept is hardly understood,” said Richard Kimbowa of Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development.
Kimbowa says Africa “needs a predictable and easy to understand financing approach for loss and damage,” adding that severity of climate change impacts are not the “normal adapt and move on.”
He explained that it is for this reason that the loss and damage mechanism is being pushed to address such losses that have become more severe for communities o easily cope.
Closely connected to Agriculture and loss and damage, is gender.It is worth noting that there is considerable progress that has been made in terms of gender policies that support activities on adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology development and transfer, including capacity building, under the convention.
“Off course, one of the decisions made at the highest level is that we have the gender national focal point persons, but so far, only 22 states have put forward national gender focal point persons to the UNFCCC, so we urged countries to see the importance of gender in the climate processes,” said Edna Kaptoyo of the Indigenous Information Network.
The call is for the Parties to increase their efforts in ensuring that women are represented in all aspects of the convention process, to ensure that gender mainstreaming is achieved in all processes, and activities of the convention.
Overall, African civil society are demanding more ambition on means of implementation, which they believe is key to the attainment of the set targets in the Paris Agreement.
This, they say, is inconsideration that effective ambition of developing countries depends on the provision of means of implementation by developed countries, without which there would be no predictable pathway for implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Therefore, the next ten days will see a lot of lobbying and activism from African CSOs as they push for Africa’s climate change and development agenda.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - Africa continues to suffer enormous social and economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts.
A vulnerable continent that is burning and flooding at the same time needs finance to be able to achieve mitigation, adaptation and technology goals.
But without a clear roadmap for delivering $100 billion per year by 2020, as pledged by developed countries since 2009, developing countries are hindered in their ability to carry out their own climate actions.
Negotiators from the world's governments are gathering in Bonn, Germany from April 30 to May 10 for three simultaneous meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Ironically, the United States, which has signaled it will not want to be a party to the Paris Agreement when implementation starts in 2020, is sitting and negotiating as a party.
“Our worry is that the world will once again be pressured to accommodate the United States and this is really very unfair because the concessions are already made in the Paris Agreement,” said Meena Raman of the Third World Network. “The solutions for addressing the climate challenge have to be fair and have to ensure that once again the poor and the planet are not sacrificed”.
Climate finance has become a sticking point in the climate talks since the withdrawal of $2 billion by the U.S. under Trump's administration.
And it is increasingly becoming a taboo to discuss climate finance with other developed countries, observed Augustine Njamnshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).
“When finance becomes a taboo in this discussion, then there is no good faith in the discussions”, he said. “You want to sit here and tell nice stories when whole families are being swept by floods in West Africa?”
The conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from developing countries in implementing the Paris Agreement will cost more than 4.3trillion dollars to be achieved.
African civil society therefore wants finance for climate action prioritized if the Paris Agreement should come to life.
“Africa strongly supports the Adaptation Fund to serve the Paris Agreement. However, we are dismayed with the shifting of goal posts by our partners who intend to delay the realization of actual financing of full costs of adaptation in Africa,” said Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of PACJA at a press conference. “We urge our partners not to further delay the decision which is key in providing adaptation support to Africa”.
UN climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, has outlined three important goals to accomplish by the end of 2018 – building on the pre-2020 agenda, which charts the efforts of nations up to the official beginning of the Paris deal; unleashing the potential of the Paris deal by completing the operating manual; and building more ambition into countries national pledges.
But African civil society is demanding the rich world offers more detail on its commitments to climate finance without any delay in the Paris rulebook beyond COP24.
“The effective ambition of developing countries depends on the provision of means of implementation by developed countries,” said PACJA in a statement. “We strongly urge our African governments to rethink critically on the progress of climate talks as any position that contradicts that real climate change implications to Africa then will shift the burden of climate change to African countries”.
BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - Africa continues to suffer enormous social and economic losses in billions of dollars as a result of climate change impacts.
A vulnerable continent that is burning and flooding at the same time needs finance to be able to achieve mitigation, adaptation and technology goals.
But without a clear roadmap for delivering $100 billion per year by 2020, as pledged by developed countries since 2009, developing countries are hindered in their ability to carry out their own climate actions.
Negotiators from the world's governments are gathering in Bonn, Germany from April 30 to May 10 for three simultaneous meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Ironically, the United States, which has signaled it will not want to be a party to the Paris Agreement when implementation starts in 2020, is sitting and negotiating as a party.
“Our worry is that the world will once again be pressured to accommodate the United States and this is really very unfair because the concessions are already made in the Paris Agreement,” said Meena Raman of the Third World Network. “The solutions for addressing the climate challenge have to be fair and have to ensure that once again the poor and the planet are not sacrificed”.
Climate finance has become a sticking point in the climate talks since the withdrawal of $2 billion by the U.S. under Trump's administration.
And it is increasingly becoming a taboo to discuss climate finance with other developed countries, observed Augustine Njamnshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).
“When finance becomes a taboo in this discussion, then there is no good faith in the discussions”, he said. “You want to sit here and tell nice stories when whole families are being swept by floods in West Africa?”
The conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from developing countries in implementing the Paris Agreement will cost more than 4.3trillion dollars to be achieved.
African civil society therefore wants finance for climate action prioritized if the Paris Agreement should come to life.
“Africa strongly supports the Adaptation Fund to serve the Paris Agreement. However, we are dismayed with the shifting of goal posts by our partners who intend to delay the realization of actual financing of full costs of adaptation in Africa,” said Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of PACJA at a press conference. “We urge our partners not to further delay the decision which is key in providing adaptation support to Africa”.
UN climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, has outlined three important goals to accomplish by the end of 2018 – building on the pre-2020 agenda, which charts the efforts of nations up to the official beginning of the Paris deal; unleashing the potential of the Paris deal by completing the operating manual; and building more ambition into countries national pledges.
But African civil society is demanding the rich world offers more detail on its commitments to climate finance without any delay in the Paris rulebook beyond COP24.
“The effective ambition of developing countries depends on the provision of means of implementation by developed countries,” said PACJA in a statement. “We strongly urge our African governments to rethink critically on the progress of climate talks as any position that contradicts that real climate change implications to Africa then will shift the burden of climate change to African countries”.
