“It is a weak Rulebook that we have got for implementation of the Paris Agreement. This Rulebook is completely insufficient to drive ambitious climate action,” said the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi, India-based think tank which closely tracked the negotiations at the24th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) that closed on Saturday, December 15,2018 in Katowice, Poland.

The global climate change summit, adds the group, also failed to increase ambition of countries to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases as per the findings of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5oC. It notes that the refusal of the COP to take the IPCC report seriously undermines the Paris Agreement.

“The Katowice COP will be remembered as an anti-science COP for its failure to consider the findings of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5oC. It will also be remembered for coming out with a Rulebook that dilutes an already weak Paris Agreement, thereby undermining the global effort to combat climate change,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general, CSE.

The CSE enumerates points to back up what it claims is a “weak Rulebook”.

Provision of finance by developed countries

In the Paris Agreement, developed countries had agreed to a financial commitment of $100billion each year by 2020. Currently, only around half of this commitment is being met. The Rulebook had to define what all will constitute “finance”, and how it will be reported and reviewed.

But at Katowice, rules on financial contributions by developed countries have been diluted.

Firstly, developed countries have the choice to include all kinds of financial instruments, concessional and non-concessional loans, grants, aids etc, from various public and private sources, to meet their commitments. Secondly, the rules on ex-ante financial reporting and its review for adequacy has been significantly weakened. Put together, these two dilutions will make it very difficult to hold developed countries accountable.

“Developed countries now have the freedom to decide the amount and the kind of financial resources they want to give to the developing countries and do this without any strong mechanism of accountability. The idea of ‘new and additional’ financial support from developed to the developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change is now a mirage,” says Bhushan.

Loss and Damage

Loss and Damage has largely been excluded from the Paris Rulebook. It is conspicuously missing from the section on finance. The Warsaw International Mechanism, which must deal with averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, has no financial resources to support vulnerable countries.

“With no financial provisions, it clear that the countries are now left on their own to address the impacts of climate change,” said Vijeta Rattani, Programme Manager, Climate Change, CSE.

Global stocktake

Global stocktake (GST) was one of the top-down elements in the Paris Agreement to increase ambition of countries. It was supposed to measure global progress and identify the barriers to mitigation and adaptation, considering equity and science. However, the GST Rulebook has reportedly been watered down into a non-policy prescriptive process. That is, this process will neither give any recommendation to individual countries or a group of countries, nor will it give any prescriptive policy to everyone. The result is that a lot of technical information will be collected without any clear recommendation to increase ambition on mitigation or finance.

“Under the Paris Agreement, GST was the main mechanism to raise ambition. With the nature of GST outcome being non-prescriptive in the Rulebook, the purpose of GST has now been largely watered down. Also, equity has been mentioned in the text, but there is no mechanism to operationalise it,” said Rattani.

Reporting and transparency

The Paris Agreement is built around countries reporting their progress on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the Rulebook, a detailed requirement has been set for reporting on mitigation, adaptation, impacts and finance. A certain flexibility has been provided to the developing countries, which have lower capacity to collect and analyse information, to provide less rigorous information. Developing countries will have to provide “self-determined”time frames for improving the quality and quantity of reporting.

It is to be noted that emerging economies like India had already informed that they would not need flexibility and would report in a manner like those followed by the developed countries.

Carbon market is the king

The Katowice COP was extended for a day because countries had disagreements over the details of the carbon market mechanism. Market mechanism has emerged as the most important element of the Paris agreement.

Paris Agreement allows emissions trading markets between two or more countries (such as the EU Emissions Trading System), as well as a unified market for all countries (which succeeds the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism). It also provides fora non-market mechanism to reduce emissions and enhance sinks in forests and land. There has virtually been no progress made on non-market mechanisms, while the negotiations on market mechanisms is now mired in technicalities.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol had major problems, including cheap carbon credits, outsourcing of emission credits, corruption and non-additional projects, which subsequently left the overall emission reductions of the mechanism to doubt. Under the Paris Agreement, these drawbacks were to be removed so that real emissions reductions could be achieved. However, the rules made so far indicate that many of the problems of CDM like Overall Mitigation of Global Emissions, is likely to remain in the Paris rulebook as well. Also,the rulebook has different rules for different markets, which is non-transparent and makes emissions reductions unverifiable. Trading is allowed for sectors which are not covered in a country’s emissions targets, which will dilute the overall mitigation effect.

Currently, many technical issues of the market mechanism have been shifted to 2019. But it is clear that under the Paris Agreement, carbon markets will be the main avenue through which countries are going to engage with each other.

Countries are on their own

The Paris Agreement had both bottom-up and top-down elements. Most of the top-down elements have been diluted in the rulebook. The Paris Agreement and its rulebook is now a totally “self-determined” process.

“Countries are now on their own to mitigate, to adapt, and to pay the cost of climate impacts. The UNFCCC is now a platform to collect and synthesise information and provide a forum to discuss and debate. It doesn’t have the tools to drive global collective action to combat climate change. In such a situation, one needs to seriously question the raison d’être of the UNFCCC,” concludes Bhushan.

The just concluded UN climate talks in Kotawice, Poland confirms the vast disconnect between ambition, urgency for action on climate change, and the political will of key governments, the ACT Alliance has said.

 The organisation, which made the submission in a statement made available to EnviroNews on Sunday, December 16, 2018, insists that the divide can and must be bridged.

“COP24 failed to deliver the best possible outcome to the most vulnerable people in the world,” said Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, General Secretary of the ACT Alliance. “We are pleased to see that loss and damage is included in the document to guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Including loss and damage helps to acknowledge the threat to vulnerable communities who are most affected by climate change. Climate finance needed a much more ambitious push to move the world beyond the commitments that have already been made and to help us to meet the goal of capping global temperature rise at1.5C.”

The IPCC report issued earlier this year lays out the likely effects of global temperature rise at different points, clearly demonstrating that increased ambition is required to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C.

ACT Alliance’s study, which was released at COP24, concludes that without addressing climate change, it will be impossible for the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda.

“We are disappointed that the COP did not put more focus on the scientific findings of the IPCC, and that climate skeptics have moved the debate backwards, casting doubt on the scientific work of the IPCC, which makes it clear that we need to increase our ambition,” de Faria continued.

“We expected stronger provisions in the Paris Rulebook to protect human rights and gender equality,” said Joycia Thorat, co-chair of the ACT Alliance Global Advocacy Advisory Group. “We urge governments to ambitiously increase their climate commitments in the revision of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), making sure to include human rights and gender in the implementation of both mitigation and adaptation measures.”

ACT calls on churches, faith groups, civil society, and governments to continue to increase ambition to combat climate change, and to keep the needs of the most vulnerable at the forefront of the negotiations and action. But we must act now for climate justice.

“It is important not to lose hope and to continue the struggle for climate justice, for all people and for the planet. Together we can still reverse the course, and we can do it with justice for all,” concluded Thorat.