Climate change adaptation comes of age in U.N. talks: TRFN

Megan Rowling PlanetArk 1 Dec 14;

Climate change adaptation comes of age in U.N. talks: TRFN Photo: Mariana Bazo
People walk near the Hualcan glacier in the Huascaran natural reserve in Ancash November 29, 2014. Peru is home to 71 percent of the world?s tropical glaciers, which are a source of fresh water for millions, but 22 percent of glaciers have disappeared.
Photo: Mariana Bazo

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In Peru, where two weeks of U.N. climate talks begin Monday, melting glaciers and more extreme weather such as hot spells and flash frosts are already harming crops and incomes, and keeping people in poverty, aid workers say.

"From the Andes to the jungles, communities are doing what they can, but their efforts will never be enough without ambitious global action to tackle climate change," said Milo Stanojevich, CARE International's Peru director.

The Lima negotiations are tasked with settling on the key elements of a new global climate deal due to be finalised in Paris in a year's time, and working out how to make bigger reductions in planet-warming emissions before that deal comes into force in 2020.

Governments also need to boost support for the poor who are already struggling with climate change impacts, including wilder weather and rising seas, CARE urged.

In recent weeks international attention has focused on new goals announced by the world's top two greenhouse gas emitters, the United States and China, to curb their carbon pollution.

But at the same time, there is a quieter push underway to secure more of the limelight for efforts to adjust to the unavoidable effects of climate change. These include building more resilient infrastructure, putting in place disaster warning systems and teaching farmers to harvest rainwater.

"We are no longer in a situation where just cutting emissions is enough. We also need to adapt to climate change where possible, and where it isn't possible, countries need to be compensated in some way," said Sam Smith, leader of WWF's global climate and energy initiative.

FUNDING IMBALANCE

Developing nations - from the Pacific through sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America - have long called for adaptation initiatives to receive more funding, arguing they should garner half of climate finance flows.

In 2013, funding for adaptation accounted for just 7 percent of global investment in tackling climate change. And since 2003, adaptation got only around 17 percent of spending approved by government-backed climate funds for developing countries.

But there is growing confidence among experts that the tide is turning - not least because the fledgling Green Climate Fund, which aims to become the main global climate finance mechanism, plans to direct half its resources to adaptation over time.

Saleemul Huq, director of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said richer countries now understand adaptation is an issue for them too, following costly weather disasters like Superstorm Sandy, which battered the United States in 2012, causing losses of $50 billion.

"What the U.S. will have to spend to adapt will dwarf what poorer countries will have to pay," he said. "These are mind-boggling amounts."

Gone are the days when talking about the need for adaptation was seen as letting polluting nations off the hook. Now there is a strong push among many developing countries and civil society groups for a global goal on adaptation in the 2015 deal.

'TWIN BROTHERS'

Quamrul Chowdhury, a veteran Bangladeshi negotiator who represents the least developed countries, said adaptation should no longer be treated as the "step brother of mitigation". Instead the two should have equal status as "twin brothers", he said.

The Paris accord should also address how to plug "the existing adaptation deficits", bearing in mind that adaptation will have a limit if ambition to mitigate climate change is not stepped up, he said.

"Where adaptation stops, climate-induced loss and damage begins," he noted, adding that a mechanism for loss and damage established at last year's climate talks in Warsaw should also be integrated into the 2015 deal.

Huq said adaptation is harder to measure than emissions cuts, making it challenging to set a firm goal. One solution is to stipulate how much finance should go to adaptation, he noted.

Richer countries are wary of including any such targets in a new global deal, although they promised in 2009 to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change and develop cleanly.

It is still unclear how they plan to get there from the current level of finance for developing nations, which fell to $34 billion in 2013, $8 billion less than in 2012.

Liz Gallagher, climate diplomacy program leader with environmental think tank E3G, said the Lima talks should kick start a process for working out how finance will be ramped up to $100 billion a year.

"We can't let that $100 billion be an issue left until Paris - it will break Paris if it is ... it needs to be reconciled over the coming year," she said.

EMISSIONS ONLY?

Another potential hot topic in Lima is whether countries should include adaptation efforts in their contributions to the new deal. Those contributions are supposed to be put on the table early next year but some industrialized nations have argued the offers should cover only emissions reductions.

But for less developed countries, they are a way of linking their current and future plans for adaptation with the amount of financial and technical support needed to implement them.

This will vary according to how much effort is made to keep global temperature rise to an internationally agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius or less, they argue, and should be subject to the same review process as mitigation efforts.

"If these negotiations do not help countries to deal with the real impacts of climate change, and only prioritize emission targets, they will have failed the very people this agreement is meant to protect," said Harjeet Singh, manager for resilience and climate change at ActionAid International.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Laurie Goering)

At climate talks, UN calls fossil fuels 'high risk' investment
Alister Doyle Reuters Yahoo News 2 Dec 14;

LIMA (Reuters) - Falling oil prices show the "high risk" of fossil fuel investments compared with renewable energies, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Monday at the start of 190-nation talks on a deal to slow global warming.

The Dec. 1-12 meeting in Lima opened with hopes that a U.N. deal to slow climate change is in reach for 2015, helped by goals set by China, the United States and the European Union to cut greenhouse emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat, dismissed suggestions that a tumble in the price of oil to a five-year low on Monday could brake hopes for a shift to renewable energies as a cornerstone of the climate deal.

Oil price volatility "is exactly one of the main reasons why we must move to renewable energy which has a completely predictable cost of zero for fuel" once wind turbines or solar panels were built, she told a news conference.

"We are seeing more and more the realization that investment in fossil fuel is actually a high risk, is getting more and more risky," she said, welcoming a decision by Germany's top utility E.ON to spin off power plants to focus on renewable energy and power grids.

Still, other experts said the oil price fall could slow some investments in renewables and may make fossil fuel exporters such as Russia and Saudi Arabia reluctant to make concessions at the climate talks, fearing they could undermine their earnings.

"It's hard to tell what the total net impact will be here," Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said after Brent crude fell as low as $67.53 a barrel, its lowest level since October 2009, before rebounding to settle at $72.54.

Delegates in Lima are due to work out elements of a deal due to be agreed at a U.N. summit in Paris next year as part of a U.N. goal to limit average world temperature rises to 2 degrees (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

CORAL REEFS

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.9 C (1.5F) and a U.N. panel of climate scientists says there are risks of irreversible impacts, ranging from damage to coral reefs to a meltdown of Greenland's ice that would raise sea levels.

"The window for action is rapidly closing," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told delegates, warning of worsening disruptions to food and water supplies.

His panel says it is 95 percent probable that man-made emissions are the main cause of warming. And 2014 may eclipse 2010 as the warmest year on record.

The talks have been boosted after the United States last month agreed to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels and China agreed to set a cap on its soaring emissions by around 2030.

The European Union also aims to cut emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels. That means that nations accounting for more than half of world emissions have set already goals.

"There is probably more of an opportunity here than there has been in a very long time," U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern told a briefing in Washington.

(Reporting by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, extra reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington,; Editing by Tom Brown, Bernard Orr)

UN climate talks begin as global temperatures break records
Matt McGrath BBC News 1 Dec 14;

A key UN climate meeting in Peru has opened with negotiators attempting to advance a new global agreement.

One hundred and ninety-five nations have committed to finalising a new climate pact in Paris by 2015's end.

The process has been boosted by recent developments, including a joint announcement on cutting carbon by the US and China.

The two weeks of discussions have started amid record-breaking global temperatures for the year to date.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the global average temperature over land and ocean from January to October was the hottest since records began in 1880.

Speaking at the opening ceremony in Lima, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the conference had to make history.

"2014 is threatening to be the hottest year in history and emissions continue to rise, we need to act urgently," she told the negotiators.

"We should be able to lay the foundations for a strong agreement in Paris and raise the level of our ambitions so that gradually over the long term we are able to achieve climate neutrality - this is the only way to truly achieve sustainable development for all."

Forward momentum

Delegates will attempt to build on the this year's positive momentum that has seen a new political engagement with the process.

In September, millions of people took to the streets of cities all over the world in a demonstration of popular support for a new approach.

Days later, 125 world leaders attended a meeting called by the UN secretary general, where they re-affirmed their commitments to tackle the problem through a new global agreement.

The chances of that happening were increased by November's announcement from the US and China, with the Chinese signalling that their emissions would peak around 2030.

The European Union also contributed to the positive mood by agreeing climate targets for 2030.

There has also been good news on climate finance. The UN's Green Climate Fund (GCF) secured over $9bn in commitments at a recent pledging conference in Berlin.

Now in Lima, the negotiating teams will try to boost these advances and maintain a momentum that will survive to Paris. But observers say there are many "formidable challenges" ahead.

"Ultimately this is not a problem that can be solved by just the US, China, and the EU," said Paul Bledsoe, senior climate fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the US.

"There's a whole series of countries - Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia - who have not made commitments (to cut emissions) and we don't know yet how robust their commitments are."

Form and function

One key element of the puzzle that needs to be resolved in Peru is the scale of "intended nationally determined contributions" (INDC).

By the end of March next year, all countries are expected to announce the level of their efforts to cut carbon as part of the Paris deal.

But, as yet, there is no agreement on what should be included or excluded from these INDC statements.

"Developed countries want a narrow scope for those guidelines, but developing countries are pushing for finance and adaption in them," said Liz Gallagher from the think-tank E3G, and a long-time observer of the UN talks process.

"That seems to be a tactical move to make sure that finance and adaptation get more political attention than in the past - for me that's where the big tensions in Lima will be."

As well as the INDC discussion, there will be strong debate about what needs to be included in the final text. Parties are likely to clash over the long-term goal of any new agreement and its legal shape.

Many countries, including the US, have signalled that they will be unable to enter a legally binding deal on emissions cuts.

There will also be pressure for countries to come up with significant contributions in the period up to 2020 when a new deal is likely to come into force.

There are concerns that the scale of division between the interests of richer and poorer countries could lead to stalemate.

"I believe the developing countries need to be careful who they allow to speak as their leadership," said Paul Bledsoe.

"I don't believe that petrol states like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela are the appropriate leaders for the interests of less rich countries, most of whom do not have fossil resources.

"It is important that the great majority of developing countries who don't have fossil resources don't get gamed by those who do."

Many attendees believe that the concerns about temperatures, and the engagement of political leaders, as demonstrated in recent months, will be positive for the process.

"I think, this top-down pressure will force countries to think they can't always retreat to their old school lines," said Liz Gallagher.

"Whether that will be positive or negative, I think that disruption to the negotiation dynamic is helpful at this stage.

"I think the countries' 'true colours' will start to come out a bit. That's useful for the public to know."