Coverage of Selected Side Events at the
Lima Climate Change Conference - December 2014

This session, moderated by Meena Raman, TWN, provided an opportunity for developing country panelists to share insights on the critical markers from COP 20 in Lima to COP 21 in Paris, in order to secure an equitable and just climate agreement. Raman warned that, although substantial, the US$9.7 billion pledged to the Green Climate Fund is inadequate to address the need for assistance to developing countries.

Seyni Nafo, African Group delegate for the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), highlighted that party contributions should not be limited to mitigation, but should also include adaptation. He urged actions on the ground, highlighting the barriers to implementation and suggesting strategies to overcome them.

Su Wei, China, urged revisiting agreements reached at the UNFCCC COP in Bali and refocusing energies towards implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

On the critical actions necessary from Lima to Paris, Ravi Prasad, India, noted the need to cover all key elements, including adaptation, mitigation and financial commitments. He emphasized that any agreements reached in Lima should be based on equity, without which reaching any targets would be impossible. Prasad urged clear and effective leadership from developed countries, and examining current unsustainable consumption and lifestyle patterns.

Martin Khor, South Centre, said “equity should be the gateway to ambition,” and emphasized the need for a financial investment of
US$500 billion for mitigation, and US$400 billion for adaptation. He urged reaching a Paris agreement based on national circumstances.

Participants then discussed, inter alia: the effects of a 1.5 or 2˚C increase in global temperature; communicating information on the process to increase actions such as an equity reference framework; regional and sectoral barriers, and devising strategies to address them; and the legal obligations of developed countries in terms of technical assistance and capacity building to developing countries.

This side event, moderated by Niklas Höhne, NewClimate Institute, presented new analysis by the Climate Action Tracker team on current emissions’ trends and targets, as well as work by the PBL on enhancing the ambition of major emitting countries.

Marcia Rocha, Climate Analytics, provided a brief introduction on the Climate Action Tracker project, an independent, science-based assessment, which monitors countries’ emission commitments and actions. She focused on Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) addressing assessment of current pledges and whether current activities are sufficient to meet these pledges.

Hanna Fekete, NewClimate Institute, presented findings for the US, China and South Korea. She compared US and Chinese electricity sectors, noting that emission intensity is currently higher in China, with the Chinese sector also presenting a faster trend of decarbonization. Regarding South Korea, she referred to the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to be launched in 2015, noting that despite the clear reduction in emissions, it will still be insufficient to meet the country’s pledge.

Fabio Sferra, Climate Analytics, reported on India, Norway and New Zealand. He noted that India could achieve their pledge despite a steep increase in emissions, while under current policy, Norway would not be able to meet their very ambitious pledge. He further noted New Zealand’s emissions are expected to increase and policies additional to the ETS will be needed.

Michiel Schaeffer, Climate Analytics, underscored uncertainty, difficulty in quantification and lack of transparency regarding pledges. He stressed the need for meaningful quantification, noting: focus on mitigation; referencing at least to 2020-2025; clearly defining a base period; and specifying the sectors involved.

Michel den Elzen, PBL, noted that the objective of the PBL project is to provide an overview of the projected GHG emissions of seven major emitting countries. He stressed the combination of a bottom-up and a top-down approach and presented results for the US and Brazil, using scenarios for current, planned and enhanced policies.

Hanna Fekete, NewClimate Institute, presented additional results for China, India, Mexico and Japan. She underlined options that will reduce emissions by 2030, including: using enhanced policies such as car standards, replacement of coal-fired plants by renewable energy, and energy efficiency in buildings and industry.

Andries Hof, PBL, presented on long-term climate policy targets and implications for 2030. He stressed, inter alia, that: projected global GHG emissions for 2020 are around 10% above the 2010 level, which is considerably higher than the least-cost pathway to achieve the 2°C target; and delay to 2030 will increase the difficulty of achieving given targets, which ultimately depends on well-organized international policies in the short term.

Kentaro Tamura, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan, focused on standard-setting for nuclear and coal-fired power plants in Japan, which is critical for the finalization of mitigation targets.

During discussions participants addressed inter alia: data trustworthiness; inclusion of specific sectors, like agriculture; sufficiency of the 2°C target; and required elements to be included in the new climate agreement.

Moderator Sébastien Jodoin, McGill University, noted this is the first in a series of events at COP 20 touching on the implementation of UNFCC Article 6 (education, training and public awareness).

Maximo Ba Tiul, Consejo de Pueblos de Tezulutlán, Guatemala, emphasized the close interlinkages between the struggle against climate change and the struggle for recognition of indigenous rights.

Sam Leiva, Climate Action Network (CAN), Latin America, described good practices in Chile, noting the government’s early engagement of civil society in the formulation of the national climate change action plan and inclusion of civil society representatives in official COP delegations.

Sébastien Duyck, University of Lapland, discussed the international framework for procedural rights in climate policies. He said that following the Rio Declaration of 1992 and the subsequent development of UNEP’s Bali non-binding guidelines, most progress has taken place at the regional level. He noted the recent decision by 13 Latin American countries to negotiate a regional instrument modelled on the compliance mechanism of Europe’s Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

Karen Holm Olsen, Technical University of Denmark, discussed how to promote procedural rights in mitigation mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. She highlighted some examples of good practice as incorporating environmental and social safeguards and minimizing risks to investments in REDD+, and the inclusion of NGOs on the board of the Green Climate Fund.

Cathering Gauthier, ENvironnement JEUnesse, spoke on youth participation in local policy processes. She emphasized the need to convene informal spaces for dialogue and report the results of participatory processes to enhance public ownership and engagement.

Participants then convened in three breakout sessions to discuss ways of enhancing public engagement. On the minimum requirements for meaningful participation in decision making, participants highlighted the need for inclusive, non-discriminatory, timely and accessible information and communication processes.

On the benefits of ensuring meaningful participation in climate-related decision making, participants noted the need to address power imbalances by reaching out “beyond the usual suspects,” strengthening youth involvement and sharing good practices across regions.

With regard to how to promote public participation at the domestic level through the UNFCCC, participants noted the need to, inter alia: strengthen communication between civil society organizations and delegations; avoid “siloing” of Article 6 issues; translate technical concepts into accessible language; and explore the role of CSOs in supporting governments’ translation role and holding them to account.

Moderated by Rishikesh Bhandary, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, this event addressed approaches to adaptation finance, including mainstreaming funds from the global to the national level and the importance of direct access.

Underscoring that adaptation to climate change cannot be “projectized,” Saleemul Huq, Director, ICCCAD, shared the experience of Bangladesh in financing adaptation. He drew attention to the country’s Climate Change Trust Fund and the Climate Resilience Fund as well as multilateral climate change funds, and called for generating critical evaluation of these funds and assessing their strengths and weaknesses in order to establish a more robust financing system. He stressed capacity building as the most important step towards mainstreaming financing adaptation at all levels of governance.

Underlining the need to change the debate on financing from what projects donors would like, to what suits individual developing country situations, Anju Sharma, Oxford Climate Policy, highlighted the importance of direct access to enhance adaptation and mitigation measures at the community level. She noted that community-based activities should be integrated into the national development plans and budgets to ensure maximum success. Sharma described the devolution process in India, stressing that civil society organizations should have access to adaptation funds.

Sanjay Vashist, Climate Action Network South Asia, spoke on the establishment of national implementing entities (NIEs) to manage climate change funds, noting that due to lack of capacity of NIEs, not all funds have been accessed. He drew attention to disparate capacities to deal with climate change within governments and called for: enhanced political will to ensure inter-ministerial cooperation; a readiness programme as part of creating NIEs; and a feedback mechanism to monitor NIEs.

Participants then discussed, inter alia, the need to rethink criteria for measuring project success; the importance of capacity building; community buy-in; barriers to achieving scale; and NIE requirements beyond fiduciary standards.

Geoff Barnard, Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), introduced and moderated the event. Barnard explained that knowledge brokers are needed to help users find, filter, discuss and make sense of the overwhelming amount of climate information in existence. He said the Climate Knowledge Brokers (CKB) Group was addressing these needs by creating a “Climate Knowledge Grid,” which aims to understand user needs, point users to best available sources, and connect existing knowledge platforms.

Martin Hiller, REEEP, stressed the value of open access information to accelerate markets for green growth by helping to identify successful, sector-specific technologies and business models. He noted the CKB Group was coordinating its work on a Climate Knowledge Grid by connecting knowledge brokers, fostering communities of practice, and enabling funding. He also underscored the need for innovative tools such as weADAPT, a website that maps current adaptation projects against predicted climate change, and the newly-launched ‘Climate Tagger,’ a tool to help knowledge-driven organizations streamline, sort and connect their own information resources.

Karina Larsen, Climate Technology Centre & Network (CTCN), described her organization’s efforts to disseminate outputs and facilitate knowledge sharing by working closely with CTCN national focal points to identify users’ information needs and enabling interoperable data sharing. She underscored that the “mathematics of sharing” multiplied the utility of shared information and noted the unique contribution the CKB Group has made to this end.

Kiran Pandey, Centre for Science and Environment, presented the India Environment Portal, saying it is the world’s largest open access data platform dedicated to environmental issues in the global South. She outlined the portal’s 500,000 manually tagged records across 9000 subjects, covering a diversity of actors, thematic areas and data sources. Pandey emphasized the portal’s ability to link data sources to geographical locations, and provided examples of how it used photo essays, infographics, cartoons and other tools to engage users.

In the ensuing discussion, panelists highlighted the difficulty of persuading donors to fund knowledge management initiatives but noted that forthcoming evaluation frameworks are starting to address this challenge. They also underscored the proliferation of websites and portals, and said that knowledge management should be seen as a long-term infrastructural investment.