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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The Global Goal on Adaptation: A Conceptual Analysis: A new OCP/ecbi Discussion Note

The Paris Agreement made significant strides towards the prioritisation of adaptation in the global climate regime. The Paris Agreement codified a Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), including provisions related to communication, reporting, and assessment of progress on adaptation. This goal is being further defined and operationalized in the two-year Glasgow – Sharm el Sheikh work programme, which concludes its work at the end of 2023.

Whilst there are provisions and precedent under the UNFCCC to guide the operationalisation of the GGA, it is important that conceptual convergence is achieved to inform how the work programme unfolds for meaningful outcomes. This is particularly important noting the first global stocktake, which is meant to assess progress towards the GGA, is being undertaken simultaneously.

This OCP/ecbi Discussion Note provides a conceptual analysis, building from existing decisions and agreements, and puts forward two propositions:

  • The GGA can be elaborated using risk-based metrics, where the global effort on adaptation is towards reducing risk associated with a changing climate to within ‘acceptable’ levels.
  • It further recognises that there are needs and activities associated with the risk reduction effort, particularly planning, implementation of actions, and finance, that are indispensable to achieving the ‘acceptable’ level of risk.

The risk-based metrics can lead to a setting of an overarching goal— Reducing climate impact risk to within levels consistent of a 1.5°C rise in temperature, starting in 2030—, from which Sub Goals can be set for the various adaptation sectors and climate hazards. Similarly, Adaptation Element Targets can be set in respect of needs and activities building on agreed elements of adaptation in Decision 9/CMA.1. The global stocktake can, therefore, assess progress made towards the GGA based on these Goals and Targets. 

Author:
Xolisa Ngwadla with contributions by Benito Müller
Publication Date:
October, 2022
2022 Oxford Seminar Report

The 2022 Oxford Seminar took place from 5-7 September 2022, at New College, University of Oxford. It was preceded by the ecbi Fellowship Colloquium, attended by senior negotiators from developing countries, from 3-5 September at Magdalen College. Participants discussed key issues in advance of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Sessions addressed: arrangements for intergovernmental meetings; gender; the Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh Work Programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation; the pre-2030 mitigation work programme; the Global Stocktake Technical Dialogue; the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage; funding arrangements for addressing loss and damage; aligning financial flows with the Paris Agreement goals; the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance; and adaptation finance.

Author:
Publication Date:
September, 2022
A Share of Proceeds for Adaptation (SOPA) in the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM): A new OCP/ecbi Discussion Note

Social responsibility is one of the key motivators of voluntary corporate action. It is therefore valuable to harness carbon markets to promote multiple co-benefits in addition to mitigation, including adaptation co-benefits, particularly if they promote global equity by generating resources to support those who suffer most from adverse impacts of climate change while having contributed least to causing it - for example through a Share of Proceeds for Adaptation (SOPA).

The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) thus has the unique opportunity to explore the value proposition that a SOPA can provide stakeholders. Given the political buy-in that SOPA can bring about, as observed during the CDM development, and the policy need to align with the provisions of the Paris Agreement, this OCP/ecbi Discussion Note recommends that ongoing efforts to improve the governance of the VCM should strive to:

  • encourage standard setters to promote a SOPA;
  • incorporate regulatory provisions for a SOPA into VCM as a key component of good governance and a high-level principle for the market, to ensure environmental and social non-carbon positive impacts; and
  • enhance coordination of supply and demand oversight efforts, to foster synergies towards effective SOPA implementation and delivery.
Author:
Benito Müller; Hanna-Marie Ahonen, Pedro Moura Costa, Daniel Ortega-Pacheco, Moekti (Kuki) Soejachmoen and Charlotte Streck
Publication Date:
March, 2022
Report of the webinar launch of ecbi's COP26 Key Outcomes policy brief

A webinar launch of ecbi's latest policy brief, COP26 Key Outcomes, took place on 3 March 2022, attended by more than 70 people from around the world. The policy brief evaluates the major outcomes of UNFCCC COP26 and looks to the year ahead and, during webinar discussions, speakers urged more action in areas like financing, loss and damage, and adaptation. The summary report of the key discussions can be found here.

Author:
Publication Date:
March, 2022
OCP and ecbi propose a new, collective public-sector goal on adaptation grant finance
Author:
Publication Date:
February, 2022
COP26 Key Outcomes

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.  

Author:
Aglaja Espelage, Axel Michaelowa, Benito Müller, Chris Spence, Christoph Schwarte
Publication Date:
January, 2022
Equity Issues in the Climate Change Negotiations

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).

Author:
Christoph Schwarte and Emily Massawa
Publication Date:
August, 2009
Share of Proceeds: An Innovative Source for Multilateral Climate Finance

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.

Author:
Aglaja Espelage, Axel Michaelowa, and Benito Müller with contributions by Kishan Kumarsingh
Publication Date:
November, 2021
Report of the ecbi/PCR Workshop on Supporting Adaptation through Article 6 of the Paris Agreement

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. 

Author:
Publication Date:
October, 2021
"Share of Proceeds:" Beyond CDM and Art. 6. An Innovative Source for Multilateral Climate Finance.

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.

Author:
Benito Müller
Publication Date:
September, 2021

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