LPAA Presentation

The Lima-Paris Action Agenda capitalises on the invitation to the incoming Presidencies of the COP to enhance the implementation of climate action. The purpose of this paper, authored by the COP20/CMP10 Peruvian Presidency, the incoming COP 21/CMP 11 French Presidency, the UNFCCC Secretariat and the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is to complement the “Lima-Paris Action Agenda” declaration of December 13th, 2014. It contextualizes and provides practical guidelines and orientations to both state and the non-state actors to implement the declaration and support the UNFCCC process. More details will be progressively included in this document.

Vision for a success in Paris

The 21^st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in December 2015 will be called a success if the transition towards societies that are resilient and that increasingly lower their greenhouse gas emissions become a credible future for the world. This means that the rise in average surface temperatures must be limited to 1.5° to 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. There are tangible efforts to respond to this vision:

A new universal agreement for the post-2020 climate regime under the UNFCCC. The agreement will have to be applicable to all, be equitable and ambitious, and tackle mitigation and adaptation in a transparent and verifiable way, as well as provide adequate means of implementation: finance, technology and capacity building.

Ambitious Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) from Parties to the UNFCCC, shared well in advance of Paris, will be a crucial step towards success in Paris, as they demonstrate a strong commitment to the common objective.

Pre 2020 and long-term finance will have to be mobilised through public and private sources, international financial institutions and innovative financial instruments to drive the transition and provide for low carbon and resilient activities.

The Lima-Paris Action Agenda will demonstrate the commitment of non-state actors and coalition of actors towards that same goal through short term and long term actions that will support the new legal agreement.

The Action Agenda involves both state and non-state actors (national Governments, cities, regions and other sub national entities, international organizations, civil society, indigenous peoples, women, youth, academic institutions, as well as businesses) acting as individual entities or in partnerships. It aims to accelerate actions – both pre 2020 and afterwards.

To that end, the Action Agenda needs to trigger a growing engagement of non-state actors as well as build concrete, ambitious and lasting cooperative initiatives, supported by time bound roadmaps for implementation.

The role of the Lima-Paris Action Agenda

The Lima-Paris Action Agenda is a joint undertaking of the Peruvian and French COP presidencies, the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UNFCCC Secretariat. It aims to strengthen climate action throughout 2015, in Paris in December and well beyond through:

1. mobilizing robust global action towards low carbon and resilient societies;
2. providing enhanced support to existing initiatives, such as those launched during the NY SG Climate summit in September 2014; and
3. mobilizing new partners and providing a platform for the visibility of their actions, commitments and results in the run up to COP21.

Milestones

During COP21, the four partners will respond to the Lima Call for Climate Action by convening a series of Action Days as well as a High Level Meeting on Climate Action, i.e. the ‘Action Day’ which will take place on December 5th.

The Action Day will be supported by a sequence of ‘LPAA Thematic Focus’ (or LPAA focus: cities and subnationals, energy access & efficiency, renewable energy, transport, innovation, agriculture, forests, private finance, resilience, buildings, business, short-lived climate pollutants). They will consist of high level official events that will highlight all the cooperative and individual commitments per sector or themes. The ‘Thematic Action Days’ will enable the stakeholders to present issues and existing solution pathways for each of the main action areas of the Agenda.

As a whole, these days will showcase the magnitude of mobilization and the credibility of corresponding commitments. In this way, it will contribute positively to the implementation of the new climate agreement beyond 2015.

Getting involved in the Lima-Paris Action Agenda

A series of cooperative initiatives were launched at the New York Summit in September 2014 on a voluntary basis to accelerate the adoption of low carbon and resilient solutions and pathways. It is the Lima-Paris Action Agenda’s goal to help the existing initiatives to scale up and report on their progress in Paris

Additionally the Lima-Paris Action Agenda is looking for new initiatives, especially in less developed sectors or dimensions. It welcomes the fact that over the past months countless new cooperative initiatives have been developed. Similarly, many businesses and sub national governments have taken on increasingly ambitious commitments over the past months.

Further engagements is still possible towards Paris! Examples of engagement

National governments

Reinforced cooperation between states and between states and non-state actors is a key component in accelerating the development and deployment of solutions at scale, as well as in reducing the implementation learning curve.

Concretely, states could engage by:

• Showcase the implementation of, and contribution to, the initiatives they joined at the Climate Summit in 2014 (link).
• Joining or partnering with initiatives, either to get some support for accelerated domestic action or to bring national expertise and assistance.
• Encourage domestic non-state actors to take individual commitments or join existing initiatives.
• Launching new initiatives.

Businesses

The contribution of the private sector is essential to the success of the Paris climate negotiations (COP21) this December. Businesses have the responsibility to adapt their business models to help meet the challenge of keeping global temperature rises to no more than 1.5-2°C.

The LPAA partners are working to engage more and more businesses in the climate action movement in the run up to Paris in order to forge a pathway towards a low carbon and resilient world

This easiest way to support this work is by committing to mitigation or adaptation actions or signing up to a ‘transformational initiative’ that will be featured at the negotiations.

This year, business has the potential to inspire governments to greater ambition.

There are three principal ways in which business can engage with the Action Agenda:

1 - Cooperative Action

This includes joining partnerships or cooperative initiatives. Several major organizations and coalitions are working to structure and promote large multi-stakeholder initiatives aimed at augmenting and encouraging climate action.

Several of them are directly targeted to businesses. The LPAA partners strongly encourage these initiatives, which will be showcased at the COP. Cooperative action can be:

• Action-oriented
• Industry-orientated
• Technology-oriented

2 - Individual Action

This involves setting individual targets. Large-scale transformation will only happen if businesses systematically integrate climate action into strategy-building and investment decision-making processes. In order to create an upward spiral of ambition, these objectives must be publicly announced and attached to quantified and time-bound reporting process. Key areas are:

• Mitigation: reduce emissions, improve efficiency, shift to renewable energies, etc.
• Resilience: adaptation measures, risk assessment, etc.
• Finance: ESG and climate risks integration, carbon accounting, etc.

3 - Public Policy Action

To encourage governments to increase their commitments and make ambitious decisions in Paris, it is essential that businesses actively advocate to the governments of the countries in which they are operating to develop public policies which encourage emissions reductions, notably policies related to carbon pricing.

Cities and subnationals

There are already initiatives anddynamics underway through existing networks and leaders: the compact of mayors, the compact of regions, the covenant of mayors, and sectoral initiatives. It leaves the door open for new and strong collaborative initiatives to emerge and to an extensive mobilisation of leaders on the way to Paris.

Actors involved at subnational levels could engage by:

• Committing towards greenhouse gas reductions, but also climate planning, climate resilience or taking sectoral commitments.
• Committing to large-scale cooperative and multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Supporting the emergence of new partnerships to support knowledge, capacity building, and financing.

New twinning initiatives between city governments, state and provincial governments could also contribute to accelerated mitigation and resilience actions. States and sub-national actors could also commit to working together in a vertically integrated approach.

Credibility and visibility of the LPAA

Using a framework to guarantee high credibility

Giving more visibility and recognition to cooperative actions requires that a minimum framework be set up to bring robustness to the commitments. In our view, each initiative, sectoral or individual commitment under the Action Agenda should, between now and Paris, focus on:

• Building a tailor-made narrative that details both operational and credible short term targets and indicates long term goals. It should also demonstrate that key partners are gathered around a shared vision and an action plan to help scale-up transformation in a specific strategic area.
• Demonstrating its relevance and credibility, by being science based, consistent with a 1.5/2°C and resilient pathway, monitoring progress and results and displaying the fulfilment of previous commitments.
• Paying due attention to inclusiveness, in terms of other relevant stakeholders or initiatives to integrate.

To facilitate reporting and tracking, the Action Agenda initiatives will progressively be uploaded on the NAZCA Platform. This “Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action”, launched during the Lima Action Day in 2014, is the most suited tool to upload consistent commitments to the Action Agenda approach. This platform gathers pieces of information provided by its professional data partners such as Carbonn, CID, CDP, IIGCC and others. It intends to include more of such data partners, especially to better reflect and highlight strong collaborative initiatives. It enables us to monitor the achievements and display the results of the initiatives over longer time-frames.

LPAA Governance: Steering Committee

The Lima-Paris Action Agenda capitalises on the invitation to the incoming Presidencies of the COP to enhance the implementation of climate action. A Steering Committee has been set up to design the strategy and implementation of the LPAA. The Steering Committee gathers the COP20/CMP10 Peruvian Presidency, the incoming COP 21/CMP 11 French Presidency, the UNFCCC Secretariat and the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. For each of these organisations two members were appointed to represent and convey the messages.