Category: Uncategorized

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes a carbon market mechanism, among other approaches, for countries to cooperate to reach their climate goals. Carbon markets are trading systems where credits issued for greenhouse gas emissions reduced or avoided in one place can be bought or sold to “offset” ongoing emissions elsewhere. Such schemes enable widespread greenwashing through mathematical manipulation, allowing countries and companies to claim to be
mitigating their climate impacts by paying for another’s climate actions, without genuinely reducing their own emissions. But the concept of offsets rests on a false premise that all tons of carbon are equal, and that we can trade reductions ‘here’ for emissions ‘there,’ when what we truly need is transformation everywhere.

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, CIEL has worked to ensure that Article 6 does not undermine real, necessary, human rights-compatible climate action. With partners, CIEL has educated negotiators on the flaws in carbon trading schemes, the growing credibility crisis plaguing carbon credits, and their history of harming people and ecosystems, as in the case of the Alto Maipo and Barro Blanco hydroelectric projects in Chile and Panama, respectively. In a significant win this year, Parties at COP27 rejected an initial proposal to include carbon “removals” in the carbon market, which could open the door to dangerous technological interventions, like geoengineering, jeopardizing climate action and human rights.

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is an outdated investment agreement originally created to enable energy sector cooperation after the Cold War. However, today, its inclusion of investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) is an obstacle to necessary climate action.

Fossil fuel investors have used the ECT to sue States over their climate measures, claiming a right to substantial economic compensation for alleged expenses or investment losses. Unless States curb investor access to arbitration in such “secret courts,” this trend is likely to intensify in the coming years as governments must take unprecedented steps to address the climate crisis. States could be squeezed from both sides: sued by communities for their climate inaction with ever greater frequency, and sued by investors under ISDS if and when they do act to phase out the fossil fuel drivers of the climate crisis and accelerate the energy transition.

CIEL has long worked to dismantle ISDS and ensure that the perspectives of communities inform ongoing arbitration. This year, CIEL worked tirelessly to educate European decision makers about the dangers of ISDS in the ECT, demonstrating how the treaty undermines effective climate action and is fundamentally incompatible with EU law. In an unprecedented win, the European Commission proposed a coordinated withdrawal of the EU and all of its Member States from the ECT. Now, we are leveraging this momentum for other States and clearing the way for effective climate action around the world.

If we are to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C and avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, by 2030 we must cut emissions in half – and eliminate them entirely by 2050.

How we define a problem determines how we identify its solutions. From its inception, the international climate negotiating platform — the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — failed to acknowledge fossil fuels as the primary driver of the climate crisis. That glaring omission was no accident: Those profiting from business-as-usual have actively influenced the narrative, obscured facts, and manipulated information to perpetuate our reliance on fossil fuels.

If big polluters refuse to face up to the facts that fossil fuels are today’s weapons of mass destruction, and to urgently step up their actions to phase out all oil, gas, and coal — without loopholes or limitations — then they better lawyer up. They will be called to account not just in the court of public opinion, but in the courts of law.
– Nikki Reisch

At the latest global climate talks in Egypt (COP27), CIEL and our partners succeeded in putting fossil fuels squarely on the agenda of the UNFCCC. But the fossil fuel industry has a new ploy to deflect attention from the urgent need to phase out oil, gas, and coal: “net zero.” Under the guise of carbon offsets, carbon capture, and geoengineering technologies, net zero creates a misleading diversion and promotes a dangerous distraction. It suggests that, instead of reducing emissions outright by stopping them at their source, we can manipulate the math.

The science is clear: We must cut global emissions in half by 2030. Carbon offsets and carbon removal technologies cannot replace real emissions reductions. Net zero greenwashing delays crucial climate action and places a burden on communities already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Last year, CIEL and partners helped secure key recommendations from a UN High-Level Expert Group, which affirmed that real zero emissions requires commitments to phase out and discontinue support for ALL fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas.