European Capacity Building Initiative
ecbi Publications
ecbi's Publications and Policy Analysis Unit (PPAU) generates information and advice for developing country negotiators that is relevant to the climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Developing countries often lack the economic and institutional capacity for policy analysis. If negotiators are unable to engage proactively by submitting proposals, responding to proposals from other States, and assessing the impact of global climate policy decisions on their individual States, progress in the negotiations can be hampered by the lack of alternatives and uncertainity. The differences in analytic capacity between developing countries and the industrialised world are often profound – developing countries lack support from organisations like the OECD, for instance, which has an immense apparatus producing thorough and focused reports, including direct advice on future policy responses to each of member country.
ecbi publications aim to be relevant to ongoing negotiations under the UNFCCC, timely, and trustworthy. PPAU works with negotiators from developing countries, sometimes through Editorial Committees, to identify UNFCCC issues where further analysis and policy advice is needed. Global experts are then teamed up with negotiators from devleoping countries to produce Policy Briefs and Discussion Notes. This partnership between experts and negotiators helps to ensure that the process of producing a Brief addresses the specific concerns of developing country negotiators; builds the capacity of developing country co-authors in policy analysis; and also builds ownership of the analysis.
For new negotiators, and for use in ecbi Regional and Pre-COP Training Workshops, PPAU produces Background Papers and a series of Pocket Guides. These generally provide a more basic analysis of issues for newcomers to the process, along with the background and history of the issue in the negotiations.
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This ecbi COP26 Key Outcomes report assesses the Glasgow Climate Summit on the level of political ambition it achieved as well as what it delivered on finance, loss and damage, transparency, common time frames, Article 6, and adaptation. It explains and evaluates key formal COP and CMA decisions, and the pledges and promises by various coalitions on issues ranging from coal to cars, methane to forests. The report suggests that Glasgow neither saved nor doomed us. While it failed to deliver enough political ambition and disappointed in several key areas, it arguably did enough to signal a shift away from business-as-usual. What’s more, COP26 finalised the Paris Rulebook, providing the tools needed to make more significant progress down-the-line. It also looks at what was left unfinished in Glasgow and what needs to happen in 2022 to maximise our chances of moving the needle at COP27 and beyond.
Authored by experts with many years’ experience following the UNFCCC negotiations, the report features quotes and insights from ecbi’s network of negotiators and delegates who attended COP26.
This briefing paper examines the key equity issues in the current climate change negotiations leading to COP 15 in Copenhagen. In this connection the paper focuses on the negotiating text emerging from the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA). Under the “Bali Action Plan” the AWG-LCA is tasked to conduct “a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012, in order to reach an agreed outcome and adopt a decision at its fifteenth session” (in Copenhagen in 2009).
The issue of predictable finance is once again on the negotiation table at the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP26) in Glasgow. Relevant – and highly contentious – is the issue of the applicability of Share of Proceeds (SoP) to the operationalisation of the different forms of market-based cooperation under the Paris Agreement (PA).
Levying a Share of Proceeds (SoP) on mitigation units transferred on international carbon markets can be an important instrument to raise finance for adaptation measures in developing countries. An SoP was first introduced for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and under the Doha Amendment expanded to all market mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol (KP) – both for adaptation as well as for the funding of administrative costs. Now, notwithstanding that SoP is mentioned in the PA Article 6, how it is applied is a contentious issue in the negotiation in Article 6.
This Policy Brief, funded by DANIDA and produced on behalf of ecbi by Oxford Climate Policy and Perspectives Climate Research, assesses the current debates surrounding SoP and its potential forms of implementation and makes recommendations for Article 6 negotiations regarding effective and efficient forms of SoP for adaptation and administrative costs. The final section considers ways in which funding predictability could be addressed through applying the idea of earmarking an SoP from the sale of mitigation units or carbon taxes at the regional, national, and sub-national level. North American and European examples are discussed, and it is concluded that multi-billion Euro funding could be generated by applying an SoP comparable to that of the KP mechanisms in this manner.
On 21 October 2021, ecbi and Perspectives Climate Research co-hosted a workshop on Supporting adaptation through Article 6 of the Paris Agreement: Innovative funding through non-market cooperation and shares of proceeds. The goal of the workshop was to provide a platform to leading Article 6 negotiators and experts to discuss generating innovative finance for adaptation through share of proceeds in the run-up to UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow. The workshop was attended by 30 participants, including representatives from NGOs, academia and key Article 6 negotiators from developing and developed countries.
Aglaja Espelage (Researcher, Perspectives Climate Research) and Professor Benito Müller (Director, ecbi) shared a pre-publication copy of a new ecbi policy brief on “Share of Proceeds: An innovative Source of Multilateral Climate Finance” with the participants and discussed the principal themes of the policy brief to be published on 1 November 2021.
In the second half of the workshop, Dr Axel Michaleowa (Research Director, Perspectives Climate Research) discussed the role of the Article 6.8 work programme in promoting adaptation finance.
The summary of the key discussions and feedback received from the workshop participants can be found in the workshop summary report here and the presentations here.
This OCP/ecbi Discussion Note by Benito Müller looks at how the use of a ‘share of proceeds’ – referred to in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol and the Article 6 Mechanism of the Paris Agreement – could, as an innovative funding source, be extended to market mechanisms at the regional, national, and sub-national level.
This Technical Paper produced by OCP/ecbi for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) as part of their Strategic Partnership looks in some detail at the options under consideration in the negotiations on establishing a common time frame for the national targets (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, one of the three top priority issues to be resolved at COP 26 in Glasgow to finalise the Paris rule book.
It analyses them with regard to 3 procedural prerequisites for accounting and maximizing ambition under the Paris Agreement, namely:
· synchronized NDC end-years, to allow for taking stock of implementation and assessment of collective progress under the 5-yearly Global Stock Takes, as well as other crucial accounting tasks, such as the avoidance of double counting under the Article 6 emission trading regime
· synchronized 'updating' (ambition enhancement), and
· a notification window – the time between the communication year and the end year of the preceding NDC – for (first-time) communications of at least 5 years, to maximize the potential of the synchronized ambition enhancement.
The resulting Key Message for Policy Makers sums up the analysis in a succinct summary of why it is essential to adopt the Glasgow Ambition Cycle at COP 26.
A webinar launch of the ecbi policy brief "Quo Vadis COP? Future Arrangements for Intergovernmental Meetings under the UNFCCC" took place on 26 March 2021. It was attended by 38 participants, including key UNFCCC negotiators from developed and developing countries, academics, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat staff, and representatives from nongovernment organisations. This report summarises the key discussions, and provides further clarifications on issues raised by participants.
NEW! Spanish version. Countries communicate their plans to implement the Paris Agreement through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). What should these NDCs contain? What “information to facilitate clarity, transparency, and understanding” do countries need to provide? How should countries account for their actions? What happens if they fail to meet their NDC goals? Read our updated Pocket Guide, which now includes the provisions of the Paris rulebook, to find answers to these and other questions related to NDCs.
NEW! French version. Countries communicate their plans to implement the Paris Agreement through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). What should these NDCs contain? What “information to facilitate clarity, transparency, and understanding” do countries need to provide? How should countries account for their actions? What happens if they fail to meet their NDC goals? Read our updated Pocket Guide, which now includes the provisions of the Paris rulebook, to find answers to these and other questions related to NDCs.
