EDF Talks Global Climate

New climate commitments from subnational governments set strong example for Paris

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Twelve states and provinces representing 100 million people from seven countries have committed to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) hosted the May 19 event in Sacramento commemorating the official signing of the agreement by so-called “subnational” state and provincial governments.

The Subnational Global Climate Leadership Memorandum of Understanding is part of a growing momentum on climate action in the lead-up to the UN climate talks that will be taking place in Paris at the end of the year.

The founding signatories of the agreement are from three continents and have a combined GDP of $4.5 trillion, which would constitute the fourth largest economic entity in the world; they are:

Acre, Brazil*
Baden-Württemberg, Germany*
Baja California, Mexico*
British Columbia, Canada
California, United States*
Catalonia, Spain*
Jalisco, Mexico*
Ontario, Canada*
Oregon, United States
Vermont, United States
Wales, United Kingdom
Washington, United States

 

 

 

 

(* indicates the jurisdiction attended the May 19 signing ceremony)

The signers committed that by 2050 they would cut total emissions 80-95% percent below 1990 levels or achieve a per capita emissions target of below two metric tons.

The agreement is being referred to as the “Under 2 MOU,” a play both on this per capita target of two metric tons, and the goal of limiting global temperature rise to under 2 degrees, which Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists say is needed to avoid dangerous climate change. Read More »

Posted in Brazil, Europe, Mexico, UN negotiations, United States / Leave a comment

Lima climate talks: Narrow outcome gives more clarity on path to Paris

Sea temperature map

A map at the Lima climate negotiations shows sea surface temperatures around the world. Source: Flickr (UNclimatechange)

The annual United Nations climate talks concluded in Lima, Peru, with a narrow outcome that provides some additional clarity on the path to finalizing a new climate agreement next year in Paris.

Nations were able to make limited progress on the modest goals expected of them, including:

  1. clarifying how countries will report their “intended nationally determined contributions” in early 2015; and
  2. identifying the main elements of the agreement to be negotiated next year and wrapped up in Paris.

When the talks ended well past their Friday deadline, Nathaniel Keohane, Vice President for international climate said:

The foot-dragging in Lima is out of step with the urgent signs of climate change that are already apparent in Peru’s melting glaciers and threatened fisheries, as well as around the globe. To finalize an effective climate agreement in Paris next year, negotiators will have to move past the tired tactics and old ways of thinking that were on display these last two weeks.

We will not solve climate change with a single UN agreement. What an agreement in Paris can do is build a structure that spurs countries to be more ambitious, makes them accountable for their progress, and gives them the confidence that other countries are taking action as well.

With each passing year, more and more momentum on climate change is building outside the UNFCCC. The UN talks remain a valuable forum — the one place where all countries come together to discuss climate change. But as we have seen in the past few months, there are now multiple ways forward on climate change, including direct cooperation between nations, action by states and provinces, and engagement by the private sector. To make progress at the scale and pace required to meet the challenge of climate change, we need to take advantage of every pathway we have.

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Posted in Lima (COP-20), News, UN negotiations / 3 Responses

Building on global momentum, Lima climate talks take on foundational issues

The annual UN climate conference kicked off today in Lima, Peru, and over the next two weeks delegates from more than 190 countries will be seeking to build on the momentum created by the recent US-China bilateral agreement and efforts launched at September’s Climate Summit.

Christiana Figueres

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres opens the latest round of UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Source: Flickr (UNclimatechange)

Nathaniel Keohane, vice president of EDF’s International Climate Program and a former economic adviser in the Obama administration said in EDF’s opening statement:

Lima signals the bell lap in the current round of talks leading to a climate agreement in Paris next year. Countries won’t finalize an agreement in Lima, but they should make progress in setting out fundamental elements of such an agreement.

No single UN agreement will solve climate change. What an agreement in Paris can do is to build a structure that spurs countries to be more ambitious, makes them accountable for their progress, and gives them the confidence that other countries are taking action as well.  The talks in Lima can lay the groundwork for such an outcome.

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Posted in Deforestation, Lima (COP-20), News, REDD+, UN negotiations, United States / Leave a comment

Companies and NGOs collaborating to end deforestation in supply chains

This post by  originally appeared on the EDF+Business blog August 27.

Deforestation can pose significant operational and reputational risks to companies, and we at EDF are seeing companies start to take action in their supply chains. Deforestation accounts for an estimated 12% of overall GHG emissions worldwide–as much global warming pollution to the atmosphere as all the cars and trucks in the world. In addition, deforestation wipes out biodiversity and ravages the livelihoods of people who live in and depend on the forest for survival.

Tropical deforestation in Mato Grosso do Sul, Pantanal, Brazil (Source: BMJ via Shutterstock)

Unfortunately, it’s a hugely complex issue to address. Agricultural commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, paper and pulp—ingredients used in a wide variety of consumer products—drive over 85% of global deforestation. Companies struggle to understand both their role in deforestation, and how to operationalize changes that will have substantive impacts.

When the drivers of deforestation are buried deep in the supply chain, innovative and collaborative solutions are required. In the past several years, we have seen many in this space make big commitments toward solving the problem, but gaining transparency into tracking against these commitments has been almost as difficult as gaining transparency into the supply chains themselves.  For many companies, the hope for making good on their promises may come in the form of powerful partnerships.

Change Starts with Commitments

In 2010, the board of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)—a consortium of 400 companies with combined sales of around $3.5 trillion—committed to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020, mobilizing the resources of the world’s largest companies to achieve their goal. This commitment is focused on the key commodity drivers of deforestation: soy, beef, palm oil, paper and pulp.

In the last four years, to encourage their members to implement this commitment, CGF has published commodity specific sourcing guidelines, created an Activation Toolkit, and launched the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. However, despite making many resources available, there has yet to be a concerted effort to measure or track against the commitment, leaving many in the NGO community skeptical.

Partnerships to Build Transparency

Enter The Sustainability Consortium (TSC®) with its membership of non-profits (including EDF), government agencies, university partners and consumer product companies with combined revenues totaling over $2.4 trillion. The Consortium’s goal is to create systems that accurately measure and report environmental and social impacts associated with particular product categories in order to help retailers–and eventually consumers–make smarter decisions about what goes onto shelves and into shopping bags.

To create common ways to measure and report impacts, TSC membership has developed Product Sustainability Toolkits for 110  product categories (and counting), including all of the major commodity drivers of deforestation. For the last two years, Walmart has been implementing these toolkits through their Sustainability Index. Walmart has been able to extrapolate the toolkits to cover over 700 categories and more than 2,500 suppliers.

While Walmart’s achievements are very exciting for EDF, what’s even more exciting is that what was once only happening in-house at Walmart is now easily implementable by all TSC members and others across the consumer goods industry through the new SAP Product Stewardship Network –an online community that enables companies and their supply chains to efficiently exchange sustainability data.

This marks a major milestone in TSC and a huge opportunity for action.  TSC will deliver an updated version of its TSC Product Sustainability Toolkits, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), in October, which will offer even more harmonized and easily comparable metrics across commodities.

A Call to Action

Many companies have taken extensive steps internally to reduce their risk of deforestation, often, though, the efforts are disjointed in relation to supply chain activity and consequently do not easily ladder up to meet an umbrella goal like that of CGF. TSC’s KPIs provide a much-needed solution for this.

Alisha Staggs

TSC has developed broad, globally applicable, outcome-based metrics for tracking land transformation/deforestation. Because these metrics are nonprescriptive, they are compatible with a wide range of strategies. In addition, TSC has included specific KPIs to track the use of certification as way to address issues such as deforestation, including RSPO and FSC, both of which have been endorsed by CGF.

TSC is working to drive adoption of the toolkits within its own membership, which has more than 30 member companies in common with CGF—including Walmart, Ahold, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Kroger. CGF and TSC officially joined forces in 2012 when they announced a partnership between the two organizations, but we have yet to see this partnership live up to its potential. CGF has recognized that they cannot stop deforestation by themselves and have called on governments around the world to “secure an ambitious and legally binding global climate deal” at the UN Paris Climate Summit in 2015 and to prioritize the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) policies, which will be the focus of our next blog in this series.

Call us optimists, but we see 2015 as the year that their combined efforts of setting industry goals and using key performance indicators to measure progress can take deforestation beyond commitment and towards broad measurement, reporting and progress for this issue.

Look for Alisha and her EDF colleagues at the TSC Member Summit in Berlin, Germany, September 30 to October 2, where they will be leading discussions on commodity-driven deforestation during the sector working groups.

Posted in Deforestation, REDD+, Supply chains / 1 Response

In Warsaw climate talks, potential to make real progress on key issues

Countries meeting in Warsaw for the annual United Nations climate conference won’t  finalize the structure of an international agreement to address climate change, but they should make progress on some important topics that will serve as the foundation for such an agreement.

Countries meeting in Warsaw for the UN climate negotiations can make real progress on key issues that will serve as the foundation of an international climate agreement. Above: Election of the negotiations’ President His Excellency Mr. Marcin Korolec. Source: Flickr (UNFCCC)

Over the next two weeks, more than 190 countries will be working on topics that constitute the nuts and bolts of an international climate agreement, such as how to support policies that reduce emissions from deforestation (REDD+), and how to finance work that reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Countries at the 19th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — or “COP 19” — also face the broader issue of how to knit these topics together in an overarching agreement, set to be finalized at the 2015 negotiations in Paris. The 2015 agreement’s structure, or framework, will be an important area for discussion in Poland.

Nathaniel Keohane, EDF’s vice president for international climate and a former economic adviser in the Obama administration, said:

Negotiators in Warsaw need to clear out the brush so they can see a path to resolving major issues on the road to Paris.

Warsaw is unlikely to generate front-page headlines – but below the surface, there is considerable potential to make real progress on key foundational issues.

This is the year for negotiators to get their hands dirty and prepare the ground for an effective framework in 2015 – one that encourages countries to take ambitious emissions cuts and invites all countries to participate.

Read the full news release: In Warsaw UN climate meeting, focus is on 2015 Paris talks as countries take on foundational issues

Posted in Deforestation, News, REDD+, UN negotiations, Warsaw (COP-19) / Leave a comment

U.S. environmental groups echo aviation industry’s call for ICAO to adopt global emissions cap this year

Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council today echoed the new call by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade body comprising 240 airlines worldwide, for governments to agree this September on a single global cap on emissions of international flights to take effect in 2020.

NGOs today echoed IATA’s call for an agreement this year on a global cap on aviation emissions. Photo credit: Flickr user Mike Miley

The NGOs issued their call in response to a resolution, adopted today at IATA’s annual general meeting in Cape Town, that urges its member airlines to “strongly encourage governments” to adopt such a single global measure at this year’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Assembly.

The resolution gives governments a set of principles on how governments could 1) establish procedures for a single market-based measure, and 2) integrate a single market-based measure as part of an overall package of measures to achieve the industry’s goal of having “carbon-neutral growth by 2020.”

In a statement today, Annie Petsonk, EDF’s International Counsel, said:

IATA has opened the door, now it is time for governments to walk through it this September. This is the signal that governments have been seeking.

Not all the elements offered in IATA’s resolution will fully address aviation’s contribution to climate change, the NGOs cautioned. Our colleagues at Transport & Environment and Aviation Environment Federation have issued their own comments on the resolution, as has Carbon Market Watch and NRDC’s Jake Schmidt.

In advance of IATA’s general meeting in Cape Town, 11 global NGOs sent a letter to IATA Director General Tony Tyler calling on IATA to act on market-based measures. The environment, development, community and science groups said in the letter:

To be credible, such measures must include targets compatible with climate science, strong provisions to ensure the environmental credibility of the traded units, limited access to offsets and strict provisions to ensure compliance.

Aviation is already the world’s seventh largest polluter, and if emissions from the industry are left unregulated, they’re expected to double by 2030.

Posted in Aviation, News / 4 Responses