Did Katowice Actually Achieve Anything?

By Paul Homewood

  

Matt McGrath waxes lyrical about the “success” of COP24, but what difference will it actually make?

 

 

Negotiators in Poland have finally secured agreement on a range of measures that will make the Paris climate pact operational in 2020.

Last-minute rows over carbon markets threatened to derail the two-week summit – and delayed it by a day.

Delegates believe the new rules will ensure that countries keep their promises to cut carbon.

The Katowice agreement aims to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below 2C.

"Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility," said the chairman of the talks, known as COP24, Michal Kurtyka.

"It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no-one behind."

The summit accord, reached by 196 states, outlines plans for a common rulebook for all countries – regulations that will govern the nuts and bolts of how countries cut carbon, provide finance to poorer nations and ensure that everyone is doing what they say they are doing.

Sorting out the rulebook sounds easy but is very technical. Countries often have different definitions and timetables for their carbon cutting actions.

Poorer countries want some "flexibility" in the rules so that they are not overwhelmed with regulations that they don’t have the capacity to put into practice.

The idea of being legally liable for causing climate change has long been rejected by richer nations, who fear huge bills well into the future.

A deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the rules for the monitoring of carbon credits threatened to derail the talks.

Brazil had been pushing for a weaker set of rules on carbon markets, despite strong opposition from many other countries. These discussions have now been deferred until next year.

Further tensions emerged last weekend, scientists and delegates were shocked when the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to the meeting "welcoming" a recent UN report on keeping global temperature rise to within the 1.5C limit.

The report said the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century.

In a compromise, the final statement from the summit welcomed the "completion" of the report and invited countries to make use of it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46582025

 

 

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Matt McGrath identified the need for urgent action in three areas:

More money for poorer countries

Greater transparency, so richer countries can check what the rest are doing.

Greater ambition – quicker, deeper cuts in emissions now from the richer countries

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In the cold light of day, none of these priorities have been achieved, or even set in motion at Katowice. Neither have any other decisions of substance been made which might have some effect on emissions, as far as I can see anyway.

We are still awaiting the final Agreement Text to be published by UNFCCC. However, we do have what is called “Decisions adopted at the Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, 2-14 December 2018”, as “advanced unedited versions”. (Translation – they might be tweaked!).

In turn, these “Decisions” stem from the President’s Draft Decision here.

Having read through the Decisions, little has stemmed from Katowice that would even start to address McGrath’s three actions.

1) Money

The only substantive decision about climate finance is this:

Decides to initiate at its third session (November 2020), in accordance with Article 9, paragraph 3, of the Paris Agreement, deliberations on setting a new collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency of implementation and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries

 

The fact that the target of $100bn a year from 2020 has no chance of being met does not seem to have entered into the heads of the negotiators.

Indeed the original Copenhagen target of raising $100bn in total by 2020 has also gone by the wayside. For instance, the Green Climate Fund, specifically set up within the framework of the UNFCCC following Copenhagen, has to date only received $10.3bn in pledges.

There is much disagreement about what should and should not be included as “climate finance”. Developed countries, who are paying the bill, regularly attempt to include as much as they can. For instance, UK climate finance money is regularly sourced from the existing Overseas Aid budget.

The Copenhagen Agreement was however quite clear. The £100bn of climate finance had to be “new and additional” money, not simply redistributed from existing aid.

Developed countries are also keen to include commercial private finance and loans, meaning that recipient countries have to pay the money back one way or another, something they are naturally reluctant to do!

All of this was left up in the air at Paris, and it does not appear that Katowice has changed or clarified any of this.

2) Transparency

The draft text includes a great deal of detail on how things like emissions should be calculated, and agrees on the timing of the first biennial transparency and national inventory reports, being by Dec 2024.

But responsibility still lies with each individual country, failing to address the need for greater transparency. In reality, the reports that we see are unlikely to be significantly different to the data already coming out of BP and the IEA.

3) Greater ambition

Nothing has changed here, as it was never on the Agenda at Katowice.

There are certainly no changes of existing NDCs, and no commitment to improve on these after 2030.

The position remains exactly as it was in the Paris Agreement, which gave this vague commitment:

https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt a lot of work has gone into all the various drafts, but it is little more than dotting i’s.

It’s a bit like agreeing to pay somebody £1000 in the first meeting, and then having a second meeting to determine who the cheque should be made payable, where it should be sent and what colour ink it should be written in.

That they needed 22,000 to attend Katowice to achieve this is ludicrous in the extreme.

As for Matt McGrath, I have no doubt he will be back at the same time in Chile next year, to warn us that we are in the last chance saloon (again!).

Last word goes to Greenpeace, who are distinctly underimpressed:

Just two months after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned we have 12 years left to save the world, COP24 ended with no clear promise of enhanced climate action. COP24 led to an approved Paris Agreement rulebook, but no clear, collective commitment to enhance climate action targets – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – was reached despite expectations that Katowice would deliver step-change.

Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan said:

“A year of climate disasters and a dire warning from the world’s top scientists should have led to so much more. Instead, governments let people down again as they ignored the science and the plight of the vulnerable. Recognizing the urgency of raised ambition and adopting a set of rules for climate action is not nearly enough when whole nations face extinction. Without immediate action, even the strongest rules will not get us anywhere. People expected action and that is what governments did not deliver. This is morally unacceptable and they must now carry with them the outrage of people and come to the UN Secretary General’s summit in 2019 with higher climate action targets.”

Greenpeace urges governments to ramp up action immediately and prove they have heard the demands of people. The IPCC report should be the call to action – action that matches the pace and scale of the threat.

We continue to witness an irresponsible divide between the vulnerable island states and impoverished countries pitted against those who would block climate action or who are immorally failing to act fast enough. People are fed up, outraged at these injustices and are taking action to defend their homes and children and pushing their leaders to act. These people are the hope of our generation and governments must finally stand with them and give us all reasons for hope,” Morgan added.

https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/press-release/6792/cop24-ends-without-firm-promises-to-raise-climate-action-and-ambition/