International Climate Negotiations

The climate crisis is a global crisis as emissions anywhere affect people and biodiversity everywhere. To respond, a rapid decarbonisation of our economies across the world is required. However some countries have a higher responsibility for climate change, and greater capacity to act, than others. Climate impacts also fall unequally across and within countries. This is why internationally coordinated cooperation and support is needed, that is in line with equity. Countries negotiate and agree on climate action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC.  

 

With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC COP21 Summit in Paris in December 2015 delivered an agreement by all countries on international climate action. For the first time in history all countries agreed to take drastic action to protect the planet from climate change, to jointly pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, and to rapidly reduce emissions towards net zero in the second half of the century.

 

In addition, the Paris Agreement created a framework for global climate policy by providing common rules for transparency and accountability, and the requirements for regular 5-year revision of countries’ targets and commitments. The global stocktakes set in the Paris Agreement take place every five years, with the first Global Stocktake having taken place at COP28 in 2023. These are vital global moments to assess the adequacy of countries’ joint and individual action toward the long term goals of the Paris Agreement. Following these stocktakes all countries are required to set their new greenhouse gas reduction targets (nationally determined contributions) for the next five year period.

 

Countries’ current climate targets (NDCs) are inadequate and would lead to dangerous warming of 2.8°C.

 

The first Global Stocktake at COP28  resulted in an assessment of how well countries are delivering at global level on the long term goals adopted in the Paris Agreement to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C, to build resilience to climate impacts and to scale up finance and support. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) outlined in its Sixth Assessment Report Special Report on 1.5°C that current global CO2 emissions need to be reduced by 43% by 2030 to have a chance of keeping temperature rise at 1.5°C, as well as underlining the urgency of near term action. The first Global Stocktake found that we are falling dangerously short, and identified critical actions needed by 2030 to help course correct. This included Parties agreeing to global energy targets for the first time: transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

 

 For the EU’s climate and energy policies, an increase in ambition and action is needed in all sectors, to reflect an equitable share of the global carbon budget. Reduction of global emissions to net zero by mid-century requires that in the EU most sectors will be fully decarbonised within the next couple of decades, and CAN Europe calls for the EU to reach net zero greenhouse gas target latest by 2040 and to achieve at least -65% gross emission reductions by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The EU also needs to set timelines for fully phasing out the use of coal by 2030, gas by 2035 and oil by 2040 to to support global fossil fuel phaseout, alongside the goals for renewable energy capacity and energy demand reduction and efficiency as well as stepping up finance, cooperation and support.

 

In addition to the urgent domestic emission reductions that the EU is required to do at home, the EU has a responsibility to help other countries financially to reduce their emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

 

Engaging with other major economies, country groups, and climate vulnerable countries through climate diplomacy and bilateral partnerships will also be key for the EU to ensure stronger global climate ambition. In recent years the EU has been stepping up its engagement with the USA, China, India and the Latin American and Caribbean region. A more equitable approach to partnerships which do not only reflect EU resource interests, but instead focus on country and community ownership of the transition as well as centring human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples must be key. 

 

CAN Europe has been working on the UN climate negotiations for more than 30 years and continues to engage actively and in cooperation with CAN International and other regional CAN nodes in the UNFCCC process.

A key part of the Paris Climate Agreement and the UNFCCC is the provision of new and additional finance and resources (including technology development and capacity-building) to developing countries, to support their action to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

 

For climate finance this took the form of a commitment by rich countries to mobilise $100 billion US dollars annually from 2020 to 2025, aiming to achieve a balance between mitigation and adaptation finance.

 

In addition, at COP27 countries made the historic decision to establish a Loss and Damage Fund and new funding arrangements to address loss and damage. 

 

In 2024 at COP29, as instructed by the Paris Agreement, Parties agreed to a new collective quantified goal for climate finance from 2025. This new goal takes the form of a core $300 billion with developed countries in the lead in delivery of finance from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources, and a broader goal for all actors of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035. 

 

CAN Europe endorses a science-based and equitable approach to this support and considers the new collective quantified goal an inadequate response to developing country needs. Considering the scale of the climate crisis, developing countries need more support to enhance and implement their climate action and adaptation plans under the convention, and to address losses and damages from increasing climate impacts.  Following the equity principle, whereby countries with a higher historical responsibility and with greater capacity to act should do more.

 

In setting up the new climate finance goal and the Loss and Damage Fund CAN Europe considers that countries should also agree on new sources of additional finance from new taxes and levies according to the Polluter Pays Principle, in a way that also supports long term climate objectives.  Climate taxes and levies could include a climate damages tax on the heaviest polluters, particularly fossil fuel companies including profit or extraction taxes, levies on international aviation and maritime transport, and financial transactions taxes and wealth taxes.

 

 Most developing countries are facing a spiralling debt crisis, and climate risks are making this worse. Therefore climate finance should not exacerbate but should support addressing debt burdens of developing countries through scaled up grants and only highly concessional loans. 

 

Climate finance and support on top of existing commitments to development finance is key to ensure that people can meet their development needs, and build resilience through mitigation solutions to support the just energy transition, energy access, and adaptation measures. Grants-based finance needs to be scaled up and finance should be more accessible to communities and at the local level, delivered in a way that strengthens gender equality, takes a human rights-based approach and supports biodiversity objectives (for more see Climate, sustainable development and human rights).

 

Shifting all financial flows and reforming the financial system

The global financial system needs to be urgently re-orientated around climate goals, equity, and just transitions to deal with the climate crisis and growing inequalities.

 

As well as climate finance to support developing countries, the Paris Agreement introduced a commitment to make all financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development (the third long term goal of the agreement, Article 2.1c).

 

Key objectives of this goal should be  phasing out of fossil fuel finance and harmful spending (including public and private finance), fiscal reform including taxation, ensuring financing to developing countries does not exacerbate but alleviates debt burdens, dealing with structural barriers to climate resilient development in developing countries, such as debt and cost of credit, the classification and accounting of climate finance, and alignment of finance with long term climate goals and just transitions toward 100% renewables and fully energy efficient energy systems.

 

Paris Agreement-alignment needs to be accelerated in public banks, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European development finance institutions, and  and driven by reform to the IMF and the World Bank, adoption of fairer global taxation rules, cancelling the debt of developing countries most exposed to climate change, and reforming the rules of global trade. This is necessary to ensure climate vulnerable countries have the means to protect their people against climate change and transform their economies in compliance with the Paris Agreement.

 

Re-orientating public finance away from harmful activities through phasing out fossil fuel finance or pricing carbon also offer opportunities to generate new sources of revenue for climate finance. CAN Europe also works on Financing the Transition within Europe.

The devastating effects of climate change are no longer a vague possibility in the distant future, but a tangible reality that we are experiencing today. The climate crisis knows no boundaries and its impacts are affecting us all, but not equally. The most vulnerable countries have contributed the least to this crisis, yet they find themselves on the frontlines of it. Climate change and biodiversity loss disproportionately affect those least responsible for causing it: the world’s poorest 20%, most of whom are women, are responsible for less than 3% of global emissions.

 

In addition, many people still lack equitable access to scarce natural resources, including safe and sustainable energy.

 

Choosing pathways to sustainable development means taking an integrated approach to meeting human development as well as climate, natural systems and biodiversity goals, and living within our planetary boundaries.

 

Climate change and sustainable development are intrinsically linked; without acting on climate change, global development objectives will be reversed, and without pursuing development pathways that are truly sustainable, we will not avoid runaway climate change.

 

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, launched in 2015, set out a range of 17 sustainable development goals for both developed countries and developing countries.

 

Grounded in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and international human rights treaties and emphasising the responsibilities of all states to respect, protect and promote human rights, it envisages “a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination”.

 

There is a strong emphasis on the empowerment of women and of vulnerable groups such as children, young people, persons with disabilities, older persons, refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants.

 

In the Paris Agreement countries agree to respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity in their climate action. The UNFCCC Gender Action Plan also aims to advance knowledge and understanding of gender-responsive climate action as well as women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in the UNFCCC process.

 

To deliver on sustainable development and support just transformation of societies, the European Union needs to take an integrated approach to the Paris Agreement, biodiversity objectives, and Agenda 2030 across its development and climate finance, and across all international and domestic policies. All European policy needs to be assessed for coherence with sustainable development in developing countries to ensure it does not have negative impacts.

 

In supporting developing countries and their communities to take climate action, the EU’s development and climate finance should strengthen gender equality, prioritise approaches which protect and restore nature, and support human rights-based approaches to climate action plans.

 

Supporting the circular economy, green and smart cities, and decentralised community-owned renewable energy projects run by local and micro-level actors offer future-proof sustainable development pathways which work for people and the planet.

 

In developed economies, such as the EU, sustainable development should translate into ambitious domestic policies that drastically move our economies away from high-carbon consumption. This shift needs to happen across numerous sectors in the EU; from energy to agriculture, and from finance to infrastructure.