On 9 November, the day after the US mid-term elections, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry launched the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), an initiative designed to support developing country efforts to switch from fossil to renewable energy, with the help of the private sector and the voluntary carbon market.
According to a 7 November Washington Post article on the initiative,“political paralysis and public pressure are pushing companies to step up with their own emission pledges — and money to help poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change’s impacts” and it was indeed extremely welcome to find that ETA includes of what has become known as a Share of Proceeds for Adaptation, as stated in the State Department Press Release.
"To help strengthen climate adaption efforts in vulnerable countries, five percent of the value of all credits generated through the ETA will be dedicated to international support for adaptation and resilience."
Given that the ETA will seek broad alignment with evolving best-practice standards, it would be quite awkward for the best-practice standards, such as the IC-VCM’s Core Carbon Principles, not to follow suit and include a SOPA (for more on this, see “SOPA added to the proposed IC-VCM Core Carbon Principles”.
It is also interesting that the hyperlink in the quote leads to a Post article (5 Nov) on Pakistan leading the drive to establish “a dedicated loss-and-damage fund”, as reflected in the OCP blog post of 4 November. As it happened, in the early hours of Sunday 6 November, Parties adopted a new agenda item on "Matters relating to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including a focus on addressing loss and damage.” This was widely regarded as a break though, indeed reported as history having been made and as "an important milestone for the vulnerable nations that have raised the issue for more than 30 years".
OCP has been working with friends over the first week of the COP to find a possible 'landing zone' for the negotiations under this new agenda item 8 (f), a collaboration that led to the following proposal for a decision text: The COP/CMA decides to establish:
- a Technical Expert Body for piloting L&D response tools; and
- a Pilot Trust Fund for L&D Response, administered by the Adaptation Fund, to receive funding for L&D response tools and to pilot innovative sources of L&D funding, such as new shares of proceeds or crowd sourcing.
