COP 23 BONN

post paris 2018:

2022

international delegates left Germany Friday following the Bonn Climate Change Conference, climate campaigners called the talks, which lasted 10 days this month, an "utter failure" for neglecting to establish plans to support the Global South in adapting to the planetary crisis—months after developing countries demanded aid at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland.

"It is unconscionable that developed countries continue to kick the issue of financing for loss and damage down the road—first COP26, now Bonn," saidJeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, referring to the impacts of the climate crisis which developing nations have already suffered and demanding that the issue get badly-needed attention at upcoming talks.

"Such financing would enable countries to deal with the impacts on their people’s lives and livelihoods, homes and health systems, and must be a core component of the COP27 agenda," Miller added.

deepening campaigners' anger was the fact that European countries present at the Bonn conference are currently boosting fossil fuel imports to replace the gas shipments they previously received from Russia, which were largely discontinued after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine earlier this year.

"The E.U. completely misses the point of what it is to be a climate leader," said Chiara Martinelli, director of Climate Action Network Europe. "European countries also urgently need to massively ramp up their climate and energy targets, rather than displace oil and gas from Russia with those from developing countries, further locking them into fossil fuels. That's what climate leaders should do."

Focusing on sourcing new fossil fuels from overseas while "consistently" blocking discussions about loss and damage financing in Bonn "exposed [the E.U.'s] hypocritical stance," saidHarjeet Singh, the group's senior climate impacts advisor.

Patricia Espinosa, the outgoing executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), claimed the talks in Bonn took steps "in several technical areas" including a "global stocktake" mechanism, which will allow officials to assess international progress toward the target of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

That view,said Aurore Mathieu, international policy coordinator for Climate Action Network France, highlights "the huge disconnect between the urgency of the climate crisis and the inability to progress on concrete outcomes to respond to it."

"Climate impacts are worsening throughout the world, hitting the most marginalized communities, and rich countries are still refusing to acknowledge their climate debt by providing finance for loss and damage," said Mathieu.

Wealthy countries, added Sara Shaw of Friends of the Earth International, are "sleepwalking us all into catastrophe," noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the world only has three years at most to reach peak carbon emissions before they must begin reducing them.

"The disconnect between the accelerating climate crisisoutside the conference halls and the lack of concrete action inside is palpable," saidShaw. "Developed countries refuse to even discuss long owed and vital loss and damage finance. Instead of taking action, rich countries are trying to shift responsibility for action to developing countries, while expanding their own plans to extract fossil fuels and chasing unproven technofixes."

"We know the solution is a rapid and equitable phase out of fossil fuels and a shift to people-centered renewables," she added.

The climate talks took place as Delhi, India faced a severe heatwavein which meteorologists have recorded temperatures of 107°F and above for 25 days since the summer began.

Indian delegates were among those who demanded in Bonn that wealthy countries help provide "massive funding so the government can prepare for extreme weather events by building early warning systems."

The climate emergency has also pushed Madagascar toward the planet's first climate-fueled famine and is expected by 2050 to internally displace 86 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 million in South Asia, 19 million in North Africa, and 17 million in Latin America.

"One out of five people in Africa are suffering from hunger, and this is just one of countless ways the climate crisis is spurring devastation that is ripping through our communities," said Hellen Neima, Africa climate director for Corporate Accountability International. "We have had enough of rich, polluting countries silencing those trying to fight for justice."

"We have had enough of you offering crumbs with one hand while you starve the world with the other," Neima added. "We have had enough of our lives being valued as less worthy than Big Polluters' profits... Your empty words cannot fill our stomachs or protect our homelands. People in Africa are rising up and will continue to rise up, until the justice that is owed is delivered at COP27."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference

2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) was an international meeting of political leaders, non-state actors and activists to discuss environmental issues. It was held at UN Campus in Bonn (Germany) from 6–17 November 2017.^[1] The conference incorporated the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the thirteenth meeting of the parties for the Kyoto Protocol (CMP13), and the second session of the first meeting of the parties for the Paris Agreement (CMA1-2 or CMA1.2).

The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement plans about combating climate change, including the details of how the Paris Agreement will work after it enters into force in 2020.^[1] The COP was presided over by the Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, marking the first time a small-island developing state assumed the presidency of the negotiations. The German government provided considerable support that amounted to more than €117 million ($135.5 million) for the construction of the conference facilities.^[2]

Although COP23 focused primarily on technical details of the Paris Agreement, it was the first conference of the parties to take place after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement.

COP23 concluded with what was called the 'Fiji Momentum for Implementation,'which outlined the steps that need to be taken in 2018 to make the Paris Agreement operational and launched the Talanoa Dialogue - a process designed to help countries enhance and implement their Nationally Determined Contributions by 2020.^[3]

Background

Outcomes

Significant progress was made on the so-called implementation guidelines for the Paris Agreement – commonly known as the Paris Rulebook – which are the details that will determine how the Agreement will work in practice.^[4] COP23 resulted in the Fiji Momentum for Implementation, which reinforced the need for urgent action and increased ambition.^[3] Parties will need to finalise the Implementation Guidelines at COP24.

At COP23, the Fijian Presidency announced its approach to the Talanoa Dialogue – know formerly as the Facilitative Dialogue. The Talanoa Dialogue is an inclusive and participatory process designed to allow countries to assess the progress made so far toward achieving the long-term of the Paris Agreement, and to help them increase the ambition of their Nationally Determined Contributions by 2020.^[5] The Talanoa Dialogue is a precursor to the global stocktakes that will take place every five years, beginning in 2023.

A rift began to emerge between developed and developing countries over pre-2020 action. On the first day of the conference, developing countries, including China and India, asked for an agenda item to discuss this issue, which refers to the emission cuts that developed countries are required to make prior to 2020 under the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries resisted this request, arguing that this issue was best discussed in other forums.^[6] In the end, Parties agreed to hold additional stocktaking sessions in 2018 and 2019 to review progress on reducing emissions, as well as produce two assessments on climate finance in 2018 and 2020. Several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain, ratified the Doha Amendment during COP23.^[7] Also during COP23, Syria announced that it would sign the Paris Agreement, leaving the United States as the only country that has rejected the pact.^[8]

Developed and developing countries also agreed to hold an experts dialogue in 2018 on the controversial issue of loss and damage, which will explore options for mobilising expertise, technology and support for the victims of climate change and will inform the next review of the Warsaw International Mechanism in 2019.^[4]

Parties reached a historic decision on agriculture after six years of deadlock. The agreement established the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture to develop and implement new strategies for mitigation and adaptation the agriculture sector.^[9]

Parties also finalized the Gender Action Plan and the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, both of which are designed to increase the participation of traditionally marginalized groups in the UN Climate Negotiations.^[10]

A group of 30 countries including Britain, Canada and New Zealand launched of the Powering Past Coal Alliance with the aim to phase out coal from power generation by 2030.^[11][12]

In 2017, as a result of conversations at the conference, India Logan-Riley founded Te Ara Whatu - a Māori youth-led initiative which focuses on climate activism.^[13]

Climate Action Zone

While the formal negotiations took place in the World Conference Centre Bonn – called the Bula Zone – other non-state actors met in the global climate action zone – the Bonn Zone – located in temporary structures built in Rheinaue Park. The Zone was marked by Fiji’s Bula spirit and highlighted the groundswell of activity and innovation being undertaken by local governments, cities, businesses, investors, civil society, youth activists, and ordinary men and women.^[14]

During COP23, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) launched the InsuResilience Global Partnership for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance Solutions with the contribution of US$125 million. This aim of this initiative is to bring affordable insurance and other financial protection to millions of vulnerable people around the world.^[15]

A delegation of sub-national leaders, led by Governor Jerry Brown of California and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, travelled to Bonn to present America’s Pledge, which reports ongoing efforts to uphold the ongoing efforts the U.S.’s emissions reduction target, even after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.^[16]

Separately, Michael Bloomberg used pledged $50 million to expand his anti-coal US campaign into Europe.^[17]

The Fijian COP23 Presidency also launched the Ocean Pathway Partnership, which will be co-chaired by Fiji and Sweden, in an effort the strengthen the link between global warming and the health of the world’s oceans.^[18]

Attendees

More than 30,000 people attended COP23 in Bonn, Germany.^[19]

Notable attendees included:

President Emmanuel Macron of France
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
President Baron Waqa of Nauru

as well as California Governor Jerry Brown, Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Climate adviser David Banks attended, representing the Trump Administration.

Observers

The Climate Action Business Association (CABA) delegation to COP23 in Bonn, Germany was spearheaded by Executive Director, Michael Green and included policymakers from the Massachusetts State House: Representative Jim Cantwell, Representative Josh Cutler, Representative Jen Benson, and Senator Michael Barrett, and Green at the climate talks. The delegation was supported by staff from Northeastern University.

Notable quotations

On Wednesday 15 November 2017, world leaders such as António Guterres (Secretary-General of the United Nations), Emmanuel Macron (President of France) and Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) delivered speeches at the conference.^[20]

Emmanuel Macron said: "The fight against climate change is by far the most significant struggle of our times" and "Climate change adds further injustice to an already unfair world".^[20]
Angela Merkel notably said: "Climate change is an issue determining our destiny as mankind – it will determine the well-being of all of us".^[20] The reliable exit from burning coal to produce electricity is a key issue for environmental organisations, investments of companies and at the negotiations forming a Jamaica coalition with Greens and Free Democrats after the German federal election in September.^[21]
Baron Waqa, President of Nauru added that: "It is now time for the developed countries to live up to their responsibilities".^[20]

Notes and references

...

https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/conferences/past-conferences/un-climate-change-conference-november-2017/sessions-of-negotiating-bodies/cop-23

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03052018/un-climate-talks-trump-negotiators-bonn-pompeo-bolton-kudlow-foreign-policy

international climate negotiators meet in Bonn this week to draft rules for carrying out the Paris Agreement on climate change, the United States delegation presents a wraithlike enigma.

Even though the Trump administration has renounced the treaty, the United States has not yet withdrawn, and Washington would like to influence the discussions. But the Trump foreign policy team, now more than ever, is a tight cabal of hard-line foes of climate action.

That puts the career diplomats who lead the U.S. delegation in an awkward spot as the rest of the world works out the details of the emerging Paris rulebook, due to be adopted by the end of the year. The American negotiators might like for it to provide for greater transparency and to avoid different rules for developed and developing nations, two long-standing goals of U.S. climate diplomacy. But they have no bargaining chips, such as money for sustainable development or bold targets for deeper cuts in U.S. emissions.

It has been jarring that the United States, historically the largest contributor to the world's carbon dioxide buildup and until recently a driving force behind the Paris Agreement, to be at the table but not ante up. Now, other players worry that President Donald Trump's new team will overturn the card table.

That's particularly troubling at a time when Europe, China and other nations will in the next few years need to set more ambitious targets than they have committed to so far in order to meet the Paris goals of bringing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero in the next several decades.

"People are trying to figure out how do you keep progress in the system without the U.S. as an active and positive contributor," said Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has been attending these meetings for decades. "If that switches, and the U.S. becomes an active opponent or blocker, then you've got a bigger problem."

"That is the concern, given some of the statements [the new Trump administration appointees have] made about reality of the climate problem ... and their overall attitude to the Paris Agreement," Meyer said.

Denial in the White House

Trump's top advisers—none of whom are at the Bonn talks—now include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has said that America should not "bow down to radical environmentalists"; chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who praised Trump's retreat from Paris as ending "the war on fossil fuels"; and national security adviser John Bolton, who views the accord as a threat to U.S. sovereignty. Trump's entire cabinet is overwhelmingly hostile to the climate treaty, but these three newcomers hold special sway.

Until recently, hope ran high among other delegations that Trump's previous top economic and foreign advisers would persuade the president to keep the U.S. commitment to Paris.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, well-acquainted with the history of climate negotiations as former chief executive of Exxon, had told Congress he believed that the U.S. should keep "a seat at the table." Former economic adviser Gary Cohn had given a warm hearing to former Secretary of State James Baker and allies who came to the White House early on to make the conservative case for a carbon tax—earning him the derogatory nickname "Carbon Tax Cohn" among his opponents on Trump's staff. And although Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the previous national security adviser, muted his views on the Paris Agreement, many close observers, including President Obama's climate envoy Todd Stern, said they had expected him to be an advocate for the U.S. to stay in the agreement, a high priority for military allies in NATO and for possible adversaries like China.

But their advocacy ran headlong into Trump's zeal to fulfill his campaign promise to "cancel" the Paris accord. And they are all gone.

Fine Print and Lots of Dialogue

Trigg Talley, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Change, is leading the team of career civil servants who are going through the paces during the talks this week in Bonn.

It's a mix of nitty-gritty deliberations on treaty technicalities and touchy-feely dialogue on broader issues of fairness and ambition, and nothing is expected to be resolved there. The aim is to reach consensus on the next steps in time for the annual Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP 24, in the historic coal mining town of Katowice, Poland, at the end of this year.

The process "to bring the Paris Agreement fully to life and make it work in very real terms [is] the most critical moment for global political leadership on climate change since the outcome in Paris in 2015," said David Waskow, director of international climate action for the World Resources Institute.

The United States and China are co-chairing a working group on transparency issues—the rules to provide accurate and precise measurement, reporting and verification on the steps nations have taken to cut carbon emissions.

In addition to pushing for transparency, U.S. negotiators are expected to resist any efforts at "bifurcation," or separate pathways for rich and poor nations.

Both are stances that the U.S. has maintained in the talks through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Other gnarly questions include how much financial assistance to give poorer nationsfor controlling their pollution and adapting to the changing climate; how to compensate them for damages already being incurred, such as drought, famine, floods, storms and rising seas; and how to design workable international offsets so that nations can trade credit for pollution reductions among themselves in a yet-to-be-defined carbon marketplace.

"At this stage, at least, the politics around the State Department hasn't unduly affected [the U.S. negotiating team's] ability to carry forward with what I guess you could call the traditional U.S. negotiating objectives," Waskow said. "But the overlay for all of this is Trump's intention to withdraw from Paris, and I don't think we should be dissuaded at all from seeing that as the central orientation of the president and ultimately the administration."

[graph]

The absence of U.S. leadership at Bonn may be keenly felt in the one-day session scheduled for May 8 dedicated to the so-called Talanoa Dialogue, the process to reexamine the commitments that individual nations have made so far. (Fiji, the current chair of the talks, chose the traditional word "Talanoa" to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue.)

So far, there are 48 submissions to the dialogue representing the views of 178 countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement, as well as hundreds of submissions by non-governmental organizations, addressing how nations might raise their ambitions. The United States is among about 20 nations that had offered no submission as of Wednesday. (Other large carbon emitters that have not made Talanoa Dialogue submissions include Canada and Brazil.)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is scheduled to contribute to the discussion this fall in the form of a special report on the science behind a tougher goal, keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But the national commitments that have been made under the Paris Agreement so far only get the world a third of the way to the goal of keeping the temperature increase below 2°C, as the United Nations Environment Program's "Emissions Gap" reportshowed last year.

"We don't have to wait for the IPCC report to know that we are way behind the curve," said Meyer.

Room for Hope?

Although few observers of the climate talks have illusions that the Trump administration—especially with its new foreign policy team—will offer to set stronger goals to cut carbon emissions, French President Emmanuel Macron's remarks before Congress last week demonstrated that some world leaders still hold out hope that the United States will return to the climate fight in the long run.

"I am sure, one day, the United States will come back and join the Paris Agreement," Macron told Congress. "Let us face it: There is no Planet B."

And when Pompeo, during his confirmation hearing, faced a question on climate change from Sen. Jeff Merkley, (D-Ore.), he replied: "I ... believe the climate is changing, that there's a warming taking place. I'm happy to concede that there's a human component to that. I'm equally prepared to tell you that as we find tools that are effective to prevent the risk to the United States ... the State Department ought to appropriately be involved in them." (In fact, human causes are behind most or all of the observed warming in recent decades, and the risks go beyond what affects the United States. International diplomacy also is needed to address the fact that the U.S. and other developed countries are largely to blame for the warming seen so far, which presents worse risks to nations like small island states that have contributed little to atmospheric carbon emissions.)

One avowed optimist is the Trump White House'sformerinternational climate adviser, George David Banks, who had supported staying in the Paris Agreement. He maintains that the hard-line U.S. stand puts the nation in a stronger negotiating position when it comes to the talks now underway. That's because the rest of the world knows the Trump administration is willing to walk away, he argues.

"The Trump administration could not have negotiated the Paris Agreement—it took the Obama administration to do that," argues Banks. "But now that the international community has invested so much political capital in the agreement, the Trump administration has much more leverage than a Hillary Clinton administration would have had in finalizing these points. It's an interesting situation."

But on top of the changes in Trump's top echelon of foreign policy advisers, recent staff turnover at the White House adds to uncertainty around the future U.S. role in the climate talks.

Banks, who served as a climate negotiator in President George W. Bush's administration, resigned from his Trump administration post earlier this year when he could not obtain a security clearance. Trump's top domestic energy adviser, Michael Catanzaro, has also resigned to return to his former lobbying practice. Banks and Catanzaro, both of whom have years of experience working on energy issues, have been replaced by two young newcomers to the field. GOP political operative Wells Griffith, whose only previous experience in energy was a one-year stint in Trump's Energy Department, has been appointed to lead international climate and energy strategy for the White House, while Francis Brooke, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who moderated a panel on fossil fuels at last year's climate talks, will take Catanzaro's place as top domestic energy adviser.

Observers also are watching to see if the Trump administration follows through on a plan, first reported by Bloomberg, to nominate Paula Dobriansky, who was a lead climate negotiator under President George W. Bush, as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department. Dobriansky's past statements indicate that she accepts the reality of manmade climate change, although she favors "collaboration, not coercion," and close partnerships with industry. (When Bush backed out of the Kyoto accord, she gave creditto the oil lobby.)

For the time being, Meyer sees the U.S. negotiating team as significantly hampered by its lack of high-level support and the power to deal. If his assessment is correct, even if the U.S. returns to the Paris Agreement in the future, it may be under rules that it was unable to influence.

"You basically have a loss of leadership," he said. "The [U.S.] team is doing the best they can on the technical rules, but obviously they don't have as much leverage on that issue when they are not playing on other issues. They are negotiating with one hand tied behind their back, and that creates a vacuum that others are trying to figure out how to fill."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

GLOBAL CLIMATE TREATY

CLIMATE DENIAL

CLIMATE CHANGE

PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

DONALD TRUMP

MIKE POMPEO

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052018/un-climate-talks-trump-negotiators-bonn-pompeo-bolton-kudlow-foreign-policy/

In Shadow of Trump’s New Foreign Policy Team, U.S. Climate Negotiators Walk a Fine Line

Staunch opponents of climate policy are now advising Trump on foreign affairs, leaving career U.S. diplomats in an awkward spot at the UN climate talks in Bonn.

By Marianne Lavelle

May 4, 2018

all pro climate trump admin gone!

Dobriansky [~ kyoto?]

...The absence of U.S. leadership at Bonn may be keenly felt in the one-day session scheduled for May 8 dedicated to the so-called Talanoa Dialogue, the process to reexamine the commitments that individual nations have made so far. (Fiji, the current chair of the talks, chose the traditional word "Talanoa" to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue.)

"We don't have to wait for the IPCC report to know that we are way behind the curve," said Meyer.

Room for Hope?

"I am sure, one day, the United States will come back and join the Paris Agreement," Macron told Congress. "Let us face it: There is no Planet B."

One avowed optimist is the Trump White House's former international climate adviser, George David Banks, who had supported staying in the Paris Agreement. He maintains that the hard-line U.S. stand puts the nation in a stronger negotiating position when it comes to the talks now underway. That's because the rest of the world knows the Trump administration is willing to walk away, he argues.

But on top of the changes in Trump's top echelon of foreign policy advisers, recent staff turnover at the White House adds to uncertainty around the future U.S. role in the climate talks.

Banks, who served as a climate negotiator in President George W. Bush's administration, resigned from his Trump administration post earlier this year when he could not obtain a security clearance. Trump's top domestic energy adviser, Michael Catanzaro, has also resigned to return to his former lobbying practice. Banks and Catanzaro, both of whom have years of experience working on energy issues, have been replaced by two young newcomers to the field. GOP political operative Wells Griffith, whose only previous experience in energy was a one-year stint in Trump's Energy Department, has been appointed to lead international climate and energy strategy for the White House, while Francis Brooke, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who moderated a panel on fossil fuels at last year's climate talks, will take Catanzaro's place as top domestic energy adviser.

Observers also are watching to see if the Trump administration follows through on a plan, first reported by Bloomberg, to nominate Paula Dobriansky, who was a lead climate negotiator under President George W. Bush, as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department. Dobriansky's past statements indicate that she accepts the reality of manmade climate change, although she favors "collaboration, not coercion," and close partnerships with industry. (When Bush backed out of the Kyoto accord, she gave creditto the oil lobby.)

PUBLISHED UNDER:

GLOBAL CLIMATE TREATY

CLIMATE DENIAL

CLIMATE CHANGE

PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

DONALD TRUMP

MIKE POMPEO

previous // 21?

only us panel coal nuke frack

https://www.ecowatch.com/the-climate-group-cop23-2509098433.html

elect cars

https://www.corporateaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Executive-Summary_EN_webversionFINAL.pdf

...

Industry groups stalk the halls of the UNFCCC

In this section, Corporate Accountability discusses

one of the most egregious ways big polluting

industries undermine climate policy: by walking the

halls as “observers” to the UNFCCC negotiations.

Currently, groups like the U.S. Chamber of

Commerce,Business Europe, and the Business

Council of Australia, which have all undermined

climate action on behalf of their corporate

members, have unfettered access to the climate

talks. Such access allows for not only direct

lobbying of delegates, but also for unparalleled

information gathering, as well as the greenwashing

of corporate images. To address the myriad ways

the presence of trade associations undermines

the talks and to strengthen the implementation of

the Paris Agreement, the authors resolve for the

UNFCCC to adopt a standard definition of conflict

of interest and implement a binding conflict of

interest policy to help reveal and limit undue

corporate influence via observer participation.

Carbon majors masquerading as part of the

tech solution

Environmentally sound technologies, such as

renewable energy and local innovations, will play

an essential role in mitigating and adapting to

climate change. While there is a mechanism in

the UNFCCC to accelerate development, transfer,

and deployment of climate technologies to Global

South countries, this mechanism has been coopted

by Big Polluters, from Électricité de France

and Shell to the World Coal Association. As Neth

Daño of the ETC Group explains, this cooptation

prevents the Technology Mechanism from

providing sound information and technical advice.

Instead it allows polluting corporations to project

an image of being part of the solution while at the

same time continuing to operate businesses that

are primarily responsible for the climate crisis. The

UNFCCC should not allow industry involvement

to compromise this transfer. Instead, as Daño

recommends, the Secretariat should fully evaluate

the environmental, social, and economic impacts

of climate technologies and ensure that the nonState

actors invited to take part in technology

development, transfer, and deployment do not

introduce potential conflicts of interest.

Article 6 and the invisible hand of carbon chaos

Markets are often portrayed as a magical solution

to environmental pollution. Yet study after study

reveals that carbon markets not only fail to reduce

emissions but create new problems as well.

Article 6, which may provide incentives to set

up and expand carbon markets, could very well

make matters worse—providing opportunities for

Big Polluters to continue to pollute egregiously

without consequence and distracting attention

from real solutions. Not surprisingly, trade groups

and corporations have promoted these markets

and affiliated individuals have even found a place

at the negotiating table. This is unacceptable.

In this section, Corporate Accountability calls for

governments to create binding regulations that

require polluting corporations to drastically reduce

emissions and reject carbon markets.

The corrupting influence of corporations’

COP sponsorships

For almost as long as the UNFCCC has existed, the

very same transnational corporations whose profits

depend on the burning of oil, coal, and gas have

been permitted to bankroll the U.N. climate talks.

In this section, Corporate Europe Observatory’s

Pascoe Sabido makes the case for eliminating the

corporate sponsorship of international climate

negotiations. As Sabido outlines, transnational

corporations use the access to the UNFCCC that

sponsorship buys them to undermine progress

and push false solutions (like failed carbon

trading or carbon capture and storage schemes).

While addressing sponsorship alone will not fully

eliminate corporate influence at the COPs, it

would chip away at the green and blue façades

Big Polluters have erected. It would also provide

space for an honest conversation on what role

Big Polluters should have in solving a crisis that

they continue to profit from. Sabido concludes

with a call for a policy to reject sponsorship from

corporations whose interests are in conflict with

the objectives of the UNFCCC and for COPs to

instead be financed equitably by member states.

Fighting corporate interests in the

Green Climate Fund

As Lidy Nacpil of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on

Debt and Development discusses in this section...

It's been a summer of catastrophic weather events: monsoons in India and Bangladesh, hurricanes in the Caribbean and the U.S. Southeast, and wildfires across the U.S. West. The impacts of climate change are killing people and destroying communities, and we need bold action on climate policy, now. But as delegates from around the world head to COP23, the annual meeting of the U.N. climate treaty, Corporate Accountability's new report exposes just how big a threat corporate capture poses to securing bold and visionary climate policy.

"Polluting Paris: How Big Polluters are Undermining Global Climate Policy" is a first-of-its-kind assessment of corporate capture in the history of the U.N. climate treaty (formally known as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change). It finds that transnational corporations, and the governments in their pockets, are pushing a pro-industry, anti-regulation agenda. As a result, a menu of false solutions are front and center in the treaty negotiations where delegates hope to hammer out the details in implementing the Paris Agreement over the next weeks.

For example, corporate influence has tilted the negotiations toward market-oriented trading mechanisms that benefit the industry groups and corporations supporting them. Meanwhile, non-market solutions like direct finance and binding emissions reductions—solutions backed by evidence proving their effectiveness—have been pushed to the back burner.

The release of this report provides support for and bolsters the work of government delegates from across the Global South who are advocating for true, people-centered solutions to climate change. It was written in collaboration with the Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development, Corporate Europe Observatory, Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) and ActionAid International.

U.S., EU and trade associations push fossil fuel agenda

In an unsurprising twist, the report also reveals that many global north governments—with Donald Trump and the U. S. front and center—are acting at the behest of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries to undermine progress. The Trump administration has unprecedented ties to the fossil fuel industry. Many of Trump's appointees used to work on behalf of oil, coal and gas industries, while many more are either deeply invested in the industry or claim to doubt the settled science of climate change.

Indeed, “Polluting Paris” is the latest report in a growing body of evidence that clearly shows corporate interference—often orchestrated by corporate lobbyists, industry groups, and Global North governments—is one of the primary obstacles to climate progress.

Additionally, the report exposes the influence of trade associations like the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). IETA's members include oil giants BP and Chevron, and coal corporations BHP Biliton, Duke Energy and Rio Tinto. The trade group has insinuated itself so far into the talks, one of its own board members negotiates on behalf of Panama and is a co-coordinator on market mechanisms for the largest negotiating bloc at the U.N. climate treaty.

"If we don’t put an end to it now, lobbyists and delegates representing industry interests will ensure the Paris Agreement promotes—rather than protects against—the money-making schemes of the world’s biggest polluters," said Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, international policy director at Corporate Accountability.

Kicking big polluters out

Corporate Accountability is organizing to put an end to it. A team of organizers and experts from Corporate Accountability are at the negotiations to support governments committed to curbing corporate capture of global climate policy. People across the U.S. can also take action to support this call.

Corporate Accountability's climate campaign builds on a 40-year history of successfully moving transnational corporations to end their abuses. In the early 2000s, we supported governments and allies in the Global South to protect the World Health Organization’s global tobacco treaty from Big Tobacco’s influence and remove the industry from public health policymaking.

The initiative to kick Big Polluters out of climate policy builds on the precedence set by that treaty.

Download the full report. Read the executive summary.

And it's gaining great traction globally. In May 2017, the issue of corporate influence in the climate talks captured international attention at the treaty meetings. The meeting culminated in calls from governments for a conflict of interest policy. And just last month, the European Parliament called for its negotiators to prioritize addressing the harmful influence of polluting industry interests at COP23. While the European Council ultimately overlooked that call, we expect governments to take up the issue again at the next intersessional talks in May 2018.

Kelle Louaillier is the president of Corporate Accountability.