Posts filed under ‘UNFCCC’
Outcomes from Poland and UN climate Conference COP24: more action needed
Australian Environment Minister walks off the stage after delivering Australia’s ambition poor statement.
It has been a hectic two weeks for negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change conference, meeting in the heart of Poland’s coal province of Silesia. The conference was due to close on Friday 14 December, but intense negotiations continued overnight and were only finalised on Saturday evening.
The Paris rulebook was (mostly) landed to continue the momentum from Paris in 2015, and this was a vital measurement of the conference success, but some elements were just too contentious to achieve consensus and have been pushed forward to COP25 meeting in Santiago, Chile in 2019.
Climate Action Moreland Convenor John Englart has been following the negotiations, discussions, and protests online and posting blog articles over the last two weeks. He also tracked Australia’s Environment Minister Melissa Price and her public presence on social media and deciphered her High level speech for Australia.
Australia won one Fossil of the Day award for refusing to rule out using Kyoto credits to meet Paris targets, and shared in another award from the conference. While Climate policies are on the rise globally, global ambition level by many countries is still lacking, with Australia rated highly insufficient and delaying global progress.
Time for a climate damages tax on oil, gas and coal production
On Thursday, the second last day of the UN Climate Change conference in Bonn, 25 Nations, provinces and cities took the extraordinary step of committing to coal phaseout in a declaration to phase out coal in the OECD by 2030 and globally by 2050.
Everyone at COP outside the negotiating rooms is talking about coal and fossil fuels. But it is a sad fact that fossil fuels are not even mentioned or referred to once in the Paris Agreement, hence does not come up in the formal negotiating discussions or texts.
Progess on finance for Loss and Damages was one of the big asks by Pacific nations and developing countries at this conference. But substantial progress was blocked by developed countries like US, Australia, Canada and European Union. At the end a forum was conceded to discuss financial options in May. Weak progress.
Before the conference Climate Action Moreland joined with other civil society groups in signing on to the Climate Damages Declaration.
Climate Analytics has recently highlighted, it has been a year of climate extremes: a case for Loss & Damage at COP23. They identified what should be done to progress the Loss and Damage agenda at Bonn. Sadly, it was largely a missed opportunity, thanks in part to Australia’s position.
UK and Canada pushing coal closure Alliance at UN climate Conference COP23
Anglesea coal mine
The United Kingdom and Canada have formed an alliance to champion phase out of unabated coal at the UN Climate Conference in Bonn – COP23 – in November 2017. After hearing the latest energy policy announcement from Prime Minister Turnbull on the National Energy Guarantee, I doubt that Australia will be up to the task of joining this alliance. We are falling further behind the new climate leaders.
Canada’s Minister for Environment and Climate change Catherine McKenna and her UK counterpart, Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry, Claire Perry, issued a joint statement on 11 October, following a successful meeting:
“Today, we announce that Canada and the United Kingdom (U.K.) will champion a global alliance on the transition from unabated coal-fired electricityat next month’s United Nations climate change meetings in Bonn, Germany. From cleaner air, to public health, to sustainability, the benefits of moving towards low or non-emitting sources of power are clear.
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