European coal mining regions face massive transformational challenges. The necessity of climate protection only intensifies a trend, prevalent in all of Europe: coal mining has been losing its economic importance over the last decades. Fewer and fewer people are employed in the sector. Coal regions face the challenge of how to facilitate a just transition, and which perspectives to develop for a future beyond coal.
Against this background this study analyses the current situation in four key European coal mining regions, namely: Aragon in Spain, Lusatia in Germany, Silesia in Poland and Western Macedonia in Greece. The study provides a brief summary of the regions' socio-economic structure, including the respective role of coal mining. An assessment of how existing European structural instruments, specifically the European Structural and Investment Funds (the ESI Funds) are utilised in the region, forms the core of the study.
This report analyses the international climate negotiations at the UN climate conference in Warsaw in November 2013. The report covers the discussions under the Durban Platform on developing a new comprehensive climate agreement by 2015 and increasing short-term ambition as well as the issues relating to near-term implementation of previous decisions in the areas of emission reductions and transparency, adaptation, loss and damage, finance and technology. The report concludes that Warsaw once again starkly highlighted the sharp divisions and lack of trust among countries. Industrialised countries' collective lack of leadership strongly contributed to re-opening the traditional North-South divide. As a result, on many issues the outcomes hardly go beyond the lowest common denominator. The conference only agreed on the bare minimum to move the 2015 process forward and also made no headway in strengthening short-term ambition. Some progress was made with the establishment of the "Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts" and the completion of the rules for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. However, here as well further substance, in particular financial support from industrialised countries, is required to actually fill these mechanisms with meaning. If countries want to escape from groundhog day, they will have to start seeing and utilizing the UN climate process rather differently.
Much mitigation-related governance activity is evident in a range of sectoral systems, and regarding particular governance functions. However, there is a tendency for this activity to relate to the easiest functions to address, such as "learning and knowledge building", or to take place in somewhat limited "niches". Across all sectoral systems examined, the gap between identified governance needs and what is currently supplied is most serious in terms of the critical function of setting rules to facilitate collective action. A lack of "guidance and signal" is also evident, particularly in the finance, extractive industries, energy-intensive industries, and buildings sectoral systems.
Of the sectoral systems examined, the power sector appears the most advanced in covering the main international governance functions required of it. Nevertheless, it still falls short in achieving critical governance functions necessary for sufficient decarbonisation. Significantly, while the signal is strong and clear for the phase-in of renewable energy, it is either vague or absent when it comes to the phase-out of fossil fuel-generated electricity. The same lack of signal that certain high-carbon activities need actively to be phased out is also evident in financial, fossil-fuel extractive industry and transport-related sectors.
More effective mitigation action will need greater co-ordination or orchestration effort, sometimes led by the UNFCCC, but also from the bodies such as the G20, as well as existing (or potentially new) sector-level institutions. The EU needs to re-consider what it means to provide climate leadership in an increasingly "polycentric" governance landscape.
Combating climate change requires a fundamental simultaneous transformation of various sectoral systems that are key to the functioning of our economies and societies, such as energy, industry, transport, housing, and agriculture. This report by the COP21 RIPPLES project examines sector-specific challenges to decarbonisation and what contribution international governance could make to overcoming these challenges.
Taking a sectoral perspective, the report identifies the key governance challenges that exist internationally towards the deep transformations required, and specifies the resulting key governance functions to be fulfilled by means of international cooperation/international institutions.
To this end, the report first clarifies a number of key concepts, including international (climate) governance, international and transnational institutions, institutional complexes and poly-centricity. It then derives a number of functions that international institutions can fulfil from the relevant literature: providing guidance and signals, setting rules, providing transparency and accountability, providing capacity building, technology and finance, and facilitating knowledge and learning. This is the basis for an investigation into the key governance challenges and the potential of international governance in 14 key sectoral systems.
Much of the current literature on climate clubs sees mitigation costs creating free rider incentives as the main problem of climate policy. Climate clubs are supposed to solve this problem by creating additional incentives for mitigation. Looking more in detail, one sees that the situation differs from sector to sector. Some industry sectors indeed have substantial cost and competitiveness issues. In others such as electricity and transport, there are costs at micro level but balance for economy and society as a whole is rather positive. International climate policy in general and clubs in particular should therefore be tailored to sectoral specifics.
While the Paris Agreement (PA) has enshrined ambitious long-term objectives, the current level of action of the Parties to the Agreement falls far short of this ambition, as is recognised in the very COP decision adopting the Agreement. The Global Stocktake (GST) established in Art. 14 of the PA is a key element to address this problem. Its purpose is to review the implementation of the PA and to assess the progress made towards the collectively agreed goals.
The aim of this report is to develop recommendations on how to maximise the potential impact of the GST. The report starts from a perspective of what the GST could ideally do, irrespective of decisions already taken under the UNFCCC and other political constraints. In the second step, the report takes these limitations into account and suggests ways for how to nonetheless work towards the desired outcome.
From 7 to 18 November 2016, the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in Marrakech. Due to the early entry into force of the Paris Agreement, Marrakech also hosted the first Conference of the Parties serving as Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA1). Researchers from the Wuppertal Institute observed the conference and elaborated a detailed analysis of the results. The report starts by discussing developments regarding the implementation of the Paris Agreement, in particular the detailed "rulebook" and cooperative mechanisms. Next, the article discusses developments in the various avenues for raising climate ambition that have been put in place by the Paris conference: the 2018 facilitative dialogue, the engagement of non-state and sub-national actors, and the elaboration of mid-century climate strategies. In addition, the article discusses other Marrakech developments, in particular on issues of climate finance and adaptation, as well as recent developments in the wider world that have an impact on the UNFCCC, in particular developing alliances, developments in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and under the Montreal Protocol, and possible repercussions of the US presidential election.
The Paris Agreement combines collective goals with individual countries' contributions. This hybrid approach does not guarantee that the individual contributions add up to what is required to meet the collective goals. The Paris Agreement therefore established the Global Stocktake. Its task is to "assess collective progress" towards achieving the long-term goals of the agreement as of 2023 and every five years thereafter. Corresponding to this role, this report addresses three questions: What should an effective Global Stocktake look like? What information and data are needed? Is it possible to execute an effective Global Stocktake within the mandate of the Paris Agreement?