As climate disasters quicken, urgent action - and cash - are needed

Alex Whiting Reuters 7 Nov 17;

BONN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As climate change impacts strengthen, poor people and countries vulnerable to rising sea level, droughts, hurricanes and floods need to be the focus of this year’s U.N. climate talks - and governments need to act faster to protect them, campaigners said on Monday.

For the first time, the talks, which opened in Bonn Monday, are being presided over by a small island state - Fiji, which is already facing problems from rising seas that forced one coastal village to move in 2014.

As millions worldwide are affected by increasingly frequent climate shocks, developing countries lack the resources to cope with the next disaster, said Harjeet Singh, ActionAid International’s global lead on climate change.

The talks need “to represent the interests of all vulnerable countries and people”, he said on the sidelines of the negotiations.

Vital to that is making progress in raising money to help countries recover from disasters, and adapt their lives and economies to the changing climate, he said.

Richer countries have promised to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations make that transition - though many experts say the figure is well below what is needed.

“The Fijian presidency has a moral responsibility to make sure we make huge progress around (climate finance),” Singh said.

“We need to have tangible outcomes from (these talks). We can’t leave (here) and say to people affected by disasters: ‘Sorry guys, you’re on your own.'”

‘OUR REALITY’

A group representing 12 Pacific island nations on Monday urged the government leaders to act quickly. More than two decades of climate negotiations have not yet delivered enough action to protect homes and jobs from dangerous climate change, said members of the Pacific Climate Warriors group.

“In the Pacific, the impacts of climate change are not a debate, it is our reality. We no longer have time to talk. Now is the time to act,” said the young islanders, part of a network of Pacifid youth fighting climate change.

U.N. climate leaders on Monday agreed that countries need to act quickly and with ambition to cut planet-warming emissions and to help the millions of people whose lives have been devastated by natural disasters.

“Never before have we met with a greater sense of urgency,” said Patricia Espinosa, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

“Millions of people have suffered and continue to suffer from extreme weather events.... (and) the fact is that this may only be the start, a preview of what is to come,” she said.

“We no longer have the luxury of time. We must act now.”

Limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels - less than half a degree higher than today - “is a matter of survival for many vulnerable nations around the world”, said Genevieve Jiva, a Fijian and project officer at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network.

To achieve the goal, countries must work swiftly and immediately to phase out coal and other fossil fuels, she said. “Developed countries and major polluters need to understand that their fossil fuels is the Pacifics’ loss and damage,” she said.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama urged governments at the opening ceremony to keep global warming in control, or face more people being exposed to destruction and suffering.

“We are all in the same canoe,” he said.

Reporting by Alex Whiting @Alexwhi, Editing by Laurie Goering.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit news.trust.org/climate


Bonn climate talks will aim to meet goals laid out in Paris, says UN
Delegates ‘do not have the luxury of lots of philosophical discussions’ but must focus on advancing the pledges set out in the Paris agreement
Fiona Harvey in Bonn The Guardian 6 Nov 17;

The UN hopes to create an “operating manual” for implementing the Paris agreement on climate change, with talks in the next two weeks in Bonn.

“We want to advance further, faster, together to meet the goals set out in the Paris agreement,” said Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s chief official on the climate, at the opening of the talks. “We need an operating manual for the Paris agreement. This has to be the launchpad for the next level of ambition on climate change action, because we know the pledges [to cut emissions] made so far are not enough to take us to [meeting the Paris goals].”

Nazhat Shameem Khan, of the Fijian presidency, said she wanted delegates to answer three questions: where we are on meeting the Paris commitments; where we want to be; and how to get there.

“This needs high level commitment,” she said. “We do not have the luxury of having lots of philosophical discussions. We have to roll our sleeves up and get through the agenda points.”

Although the document agreed in Paris was extensive, it could not set out in full detail all of the ways in which governments would be expected to implement the agreement, and the process of checking how this is being achieved. Some of these technical issues could be relatively easily resolved, but others have a broader political import that will require delicate negotiation.

One key issue will be “enhancing ambition”, which means making good on the commitment made in Paris to strengthen countries’ pledges on cutting emissions, given that current pledges are inadequate to hold warming to no more than 2C, as required by the landmark agreement. A key date falls next year, when countries are supposed to start coming forward with higher pledges.

However, Espinosa stopped short of saying that COP23 would result in a full timetable for when countries would be required to make new commitments. “That’s a difficult question to answer at this point. But I remain optimistic.”

Elina Bardram, director general of climate action for the EU, said the bloc wanted to “flesh out the technical guidelines of implementation”, including allowing for “transparency and accountability”. This means ensuring not only that pledges are sufficient, but that they are being met by the national governments signed up to the Paris accord. It can be a tricky issue at the UN talks, where countries set their own targets and ways of meeting them.

The EU is soon expected to set out its own progress on meeting its emissions-cutting target, and how it intends to ensure its 2030 target of a 40% emissions cut is met.

Discussions would also take place on climate finance, which involves ways of helping poorer countries to cut their emissions, Espinosa promised. She declined to give any targets on how much finance should be raised and where it should come from, but said the outlook was positive. “There is a very clear tendency going in the direction of green financing,” she said, referring to estimates that more money worldwide is going into low-carbon projects.

She also said the US delegation was present and taking a full part in the talks. President Donald Trump announced last summer his intention to begin the withdrawal process, the only country to have done so. Despite this, the US will be party to the agreement until 2020, as the the withdrawal process will take several years.

The UN said 169 countries of the 197 signed up to the Paris agreement had now ratified it.