At an event on the sidelines of Wednesday’s talks, the “Troika” of COP presidencies was very clear that the next round of national climate plans (NDCs) must be aligned with a global warming limit of 1.5C. The three countries – the UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil – have all promised to set an example by publishing “1.5-aligned” plans by early next year.
What their negotiators were not so clear on, however, was what it means for an NDC to be 1.5-aligned.
Asked by Destination Zero’s Cat Abreu about the risk of “1.5 washing”, Brazil’s head of delegation Liliam Chagas replied that “there is no international multilaterally agreed methodology to define what is an NDC aligned to 1.5”. “It’s up to each one to decide,” she said.
The moderator, WWF’s climate lead Fernanda Carvalho, pointed out that IPCC scientists say 1.5C alignment means cutting emissions globally by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 – but without giving national breakdowns.
She added that Climate Action Tracker does have a methodology. This shows that no major nations so far have climate plans aligned with 1.5C.
E3G expert Alden Meyer followed up, telling the negotiators that “while we may have some disagreements on exactly what an NDC must include to be 1.5-aligned, we know now what it must exclude – it must exclude any plans to expand the production and export of fossil fuels”.
All three Troika nations are oil and gas producers with no plans to stop producing or exporting their fossil fuels and are in fact ramping up production.
Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator for Brazil’s Climate Observatory, said the onus is on rich countries to move first, but “this is no excuse for doing nothing”. Even yesterday, he noted, President Lula was talking to Saudi investors about opening a new oil frontier on Brazil’s northern shore.
Whether 1.5-aligned or not, no government has used Bonn as an opportunity to release an early NDC. Azerbaijan’s lead on Troika relations Rovshan Mirzayev said “some”, but “no more than 10”, are expected to be published by COP29 in November.
Napping on NAPs or drowning in paperwork?
As he opened the Bonn conference last week, UN climate head Simon Stiell bemoaned that only 57 governments have so far put together a national adaptation plan (NAP) to adjust to the impacts of climate change.
“By the time we meet in Baku, this number needs to grow substantially. We need every country to have a plan by 2025 and make progress on implementing them by 2030,” he said.
The South American nation of Suriname is one of the 57. Its coast is retreating, leaving the skeletons of homes visible in the sea and bringing salt water into cropland – and its NAP lays out how it wants to minimise that.
Tiffany Van Ravenswaay, an AOSIS adaptation negotiator who used to work for Suriname’s government, told Climate Home how hard it is for small islands and the poorest countries to craft such plans.
“We have one person holding five or seven hats in the same government,” she said. These busy civil servants often don’t have time to compile a 200-page NAP, and then an application to the Green Climate Fund or Adaptation Fund for money to implement it, accompanied by a thesis on why these impacts are definitely caused by climate change.
“It takes a lot of data, it takes a lot of work, and it takes also a lot of human resources,” she said. What’s needed, she added, are funds for capacity-building, to hire and train people.
Cecilia Quaglino moved from Argentina to the Pacific Island nation of Palau to write, along with just one colleague, its NAP. She told Climate Home they are “struggling” to get it ready by next year. “We need expertise, finance and human resources,” she said.
According to three sources in the room, developing countries pushed for the NAP negotiations in Bonn to include the “means of implementation” – the
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