 Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Negotiations What's On the Table, the fourth briefing in our five-part series, what Congress needs to know in the lead-up to COP26. I'm Dan Berset, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. In a little more than a week, thousands of leaders, diplomats, climate scientists, and stakeholders from across the private and public sectors will descend on Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP26. ESI has devoted the entire month of October to providing briefings and related educational resources with the information and insights that members of Congress and their staff need in the lead-up to, during, and after COP26. I would like to acknowledge our honorary co-sponsor, the British Embassy of Washington, and our great partner, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, for their support and cooperation that make this briefing series possible. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policy makers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. ESI provides informative, objective, nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics, briefings, written materials, and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing recordings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts are always available for free online at www.esi.org. The best way to stay informed about our latest resources is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. The next issue comes out next Tuesday. When COP26 begins, ESI will launch for the first time a special daily newsletter, Glasgow Dispatch, to track the climate talks. Each daily edition will cover U.S. involvement in the negotiations, updates on other countries, and key issue coverage, all with the educational and informational needs of Congress in mind. If you would like to sign up for this new daily newsletter, Glasgow Dispatch, you can subscribe online at www.esi.org forward slash COP news. We know how much will be happening and all the other demands on staff on Capitol Hill. So I hope everyone will take full advantage of ESI during this very busy time. Our briefing series began on October 8th with a conversation featuring Sir Robert Watson and Cristiana Figueiras about the urgency of climate change and reasons for optimism as we face the enormous challenges of global warming and biodiversity loss. On October 15th, we gathered experts in climate adaptation and resilience to discuss the status of various initiatives undertaken or expanded since COP25 in late 2019. And just on Wednesday, our focus was international climate finance and efforts underway to mobilize and leverage investments to advance climate change solutions and accelerate an equitable transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy. If you missed any of the first three briefings in the series, I encourage you to watch the archived webcast and review presentation materials. And of course, everything is available online for free at www.esi.org. After COP26, we will convene a special briefing on Thursday, November 18th for an after-action report to review key outcomes and discuss possible next steps. Today, the topic will be major issues on the agenda for the negotiations at COP26. And our panelists will help our audience understand these issues in the context of the Paris Agreement and why it matters for US policymakers involved in infrastructure legislation, the reconciliation package and annual appropriations for federal agencies and international organizations. I'm gonna cut my remarks short today because we have an amazing panel coming up in just a moment. But before I do introduce our first panelists, I'd like to remind everyone that just because you're not with us today in person, doesn't mean you still can't participate. We will be taking questions from our online audience and we'll do our best to incorporate them into the discussion. If you have a question that comes up during the session today, you can send it to us in two ways. The first is by following us on Twitter at EESI online. You should really do that anyway, but specifically if you have a question that's one way you can get it to us. You can also send us an email and the email address to use is askask at EESI.org. We may not get to every question submitted, but we'll do our best, like I said, to incorporate them into the discussion. And with that is my privilege to introduce our first panelists today. Jennifer Allen is a strategic advisor and team leader with Earth Negotiations Bulletin, as well as a lecturer at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the global governance of climate change, chemicals and wastes. Her publications explore the complexities of setting global rules for the environment and the role of non-state actors and negotiation processes. Jen, it's great to see you today. Welcome to the briefing and I'll turn it over to you. Great, thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here. Just let me quickly share my slides. Great, so this first bit, I really just want to give you sort of almost a cup boot camp in a way. What is COP? What can we expect? And what is sort of the feel for a COP, a big meeting like this? Because these UN climate change meetings are the largest meetings on the UN calendar. So you can expect an awful lot of people to be showing up in Glasgow. So first I'll talk about just what is COP? What does it mean when we keep using those words? What does it come to mean over time? I'll give you a quick orientation of what the main bodies are that are meeting at COP. And again, sort of that usual rhythm in terms of the day-to-day flow of what will happen over the two weeks. So when we say COP, technically that means the conference of the parties. It's a governing body for the UN Convention, New York Framework, oh, I'll try again, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So we say COP because that's the body that meets. But over time, it's grown to be so much more than that body that oversees this treaty's implementation. Negotiations have continually happened. We've added the Kyoto Protocol, we've added the Paris Agreement. We've also, you can think of it like a coral reef where in addition to that legal body that meets, it's become a place where once a year, everyone working on climate change meets and gathers together. Regardless of whether or not there's strictly there for the negotiations. So we see a lot of activists using this as their platform once a year to get their issues across and to try to push for more ambitious climate action. We see that COP has become a forum for mobilizing commitments from cities, from subnational entities like states or provinces, depending on the country and from the private sector. The private sector often shows up to COP and they will make pledges and they will mobilize and show their support for climate action as well. So it's really become sort of a forum for a lot of different parts of climate action from across society. And because of that, it means that once a year, this is the time that we're all talking about climate change and the media is more engaged and public attention is really focused on the issue in a way that it isn't most of the rest of the year. So COP, while technically it's that one body, it's grown over time to become much, much more. So usually we're getting about 20 to 25,000 people at these COPs now. Ever since 2015, we routinely hit that 20K mark. And even with the pandemic, Glasgow's looking to be quite similar. Registration is about 17, 18,000, the last numbers I saw. And they're starting to cap participation in the venue itself at 10,000 a day for pandemic related reasons to allow for social distancing. And it's because these meetings just have become so huge over time, which is exactly this. So these huge meetings post Paris, 17, 18, 20,000 people and it wasn't always like that. So you can see the growth in terms of who participates at these COPs. And the blue bars there are the parties and observer states, so countries. That's roughly even, but you'll see some years that the delegation sizes really go up. Also you'll see the NGOs, those numbers have gone up quite a bit and a wider range of NGOs now attend than ever before. And there's a lot of different issues that now they're connecting to climate change. So from all sort of types of groups that would attend a COP, it's really growing. And that's how it's become the largest event on the UN calendar. I should also say, since we are living through a pandemic right now, this is the first big event to go ahead entirely in person. Other big COPs planned for other environmental issues such as biodiversity have been largely postponing their in-person events until 2022. So all eyes are on this for multiple perspectives, including from the UN system to see if it can work and if we can hold big in-person negotiation-based meetings again. So here's what all of those bodies that are going to be meeting over these two weeks in person look like. So we have COP, which is the Conference of the Parties. We have CMA, which is for the Paris Agreement. It's a governing body that overviews the Paris Agreement. And then we have the CMP, which is a similar type of body that oversees the Kyoto Protocol. That one we won't hear as much about because the Kyoto Protocol's last commitment period ended right before Paris Agreement took over, and that was on purpose, that the Paris Agreement is taking over for much of the Kyoto Protocol's work. So those are big governing bodies. They're going to deal with the decision-making. They're going to deal with maybe some of the more politically thorny issues. That's where we'll see the decisions made. Below them and where they task much of the technical work is two bodies that are called SUBSTA and SBI. SUBSTA is the subsidiary body for scientific and technological advice. It's dealing with kind of what the name says. Scientific matters, technical matters, maybe around methodological issues, greenhouse gas inventories, reporting frameworks, things of that nature. The subsidiary body for implementation looks at how the convention and the agreement are being implemented. And so it will look at things like reports from some other bodies, like the adaptation committee, for example, and it'll make recommendations up to the COP or the CMA as appropriate. The ones in green at the bottom, these won't be meeting during COP, but you'll hear them a lot. You'll hear about the financial mechanism, the adaptation committee, the standing committee on finance. These are constituted bodies and expert groups that meet throughout the year to help do some of that implementation work, to help make sure that the convention and the Paris Agreement are being implemented and support parties while they implement these agreements back home. These bodies have largely been able to meet during the pandemic, but they've been doing it virtually. So it hasn't been 100% perfect, but they have been able to get most, if not all of their meetings in, and they have been able to provide a report and a second of recommendations for those subsidiary bodies to consider and in turn for the COP and the CMA to consider. So that's sort of some of the acronyms that you're going to hear quite a bit of because they'll be the ones meeting throughout the week or the two weeks. Here's kind of what to expect in those two weeks. So week one, we're starting off on the 31st. We're getting an extra day for this COP because we're starting with a world leader summit. And this will be one day, I think, although they just announced about 121 speakers. So probably two days. I think we'll have two days of world leaders speaking. And basically they're going to be giving high level speeches. They're going to be talking about maybe what their pledges to the Paris Agreement contain. Hopefully developed countries will be bringing financial pledges, but that'll be sort of a high level security tight event. Then we'll see all of these bodies, the COP, the CMA, the SUBSDA, the SBI, they're all going to hold their opening plenaries. These are surprisingly dull. It really is just a procedural event to kick off the meeting. The main thing is adopting the agenda because that is the list of issues that will be negotiated over the two weeks. And so if some issues are left on the agenda, then they're not talked about. And countries all have to agree to everything in that list. So the agenda is crucial. Once that's adopted, they literally go one by one through each of those items, open them up, establish maybe what's called a contact group or informal consultations. These are small groups that will then meet throughout the first week to try to hash out these issues in some detail. Then there'll be some opening statements. And then that's all of the bodies open. All of that is going to happen in the first two days, the World Leader Summit, and opening all these bodies because the goal is to allow maximum time from Tuesday to Saturday for the SUBSDA and for the SBI to meet in those small groups and to try to get through the technical work that they've been tasked. And the agendas are full. COP couldn't meet last year because of the pandemic. And some of their work, they couldn't complete in 2019 when they were in Madrid. So there's, in some cases, three years of work programs to be considering here. So they have an awful lot of technical work to try to plow through. Technically, they end on Saturday. Usually it's very early in the morning, Sunday, like more like 4 a.m.-ish, we get done. And anything that they can't finish, they pass on to week two and they ask the COP or perhaps the CMA to take it on under the presidency's guidance. So anything that they can't get done, it doesn't disappear. It moves on unless parties can't even agree to do that. And if they're completely stalemated, then something called Rule 16 happens and they just agree to disagree and put it on the agenda for next time. So we hit week two on Monday. And week two is when we're going to see more of the political issues. We're going to have another high-level segment this time with ministers speaking. And from there, they might get involved in the negotiations maybe by Thursday, Wednesday night, Thursday. So we'll see issues like finance be raised quite a bit during week two. Other of the more political issues will be brought up and those leftover issues from the subsidiary bodies. When the ministers get engaged on about Thursday, then sometimes it can be a bit tough to know what's going on because sometimes it's quite one-on-one delegation-type meetings to broker a deal. And often it involves a package of deals that will happen. Probably we won't be finishing this meeting on time. On time means Friday at six o'clock, local time. That's never happened to my knowledge. And I mean, we easily go into Saturday. Occasionally like 2019, we go into Sunday. So these last-minute deals are quite common, partly because it is a package that tends to all be put together at the last minute or not the last minute, but they take their time to do it and it seems to all sort of come together somehow in the back room somewhere. So don't think that you're off the hook on Friday because you're probably still be looking at this on Saturday. It does tend to be sort of that political last-minute deal and then we have a closing plenary to wrap it all up where the last decisions are made and then parties give their closing statements, which is really their initial reflection. So it's a great first litmus test to see how happy parties are or where they're disappointed with what they've come up with over the two weeks. So I'm going to leave it there and let the other speakers go and then I'm coming back to chat about finance. So thanks very much. Thank you, Jen. Yes, you'll come back after we hear from our, you're our first panelist, also our fourth panelist today. So we'll be back with you in a moment. I'm going to now introduce our second panelist, Tracy Bach, serves as the co-focal point of research in independent non-governmental organizations to the UNFCCC secretariat. She is a law professor who has taught and published on climate change, international environmental law and human rights and healthcare and environmental health law. She has degrees from Yale and the University of Minnesota. Tracy, it's always great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Thanks, Dan. And thanks for the great introduction. Let me share my screen as well. Well, Jen has set the table for us, which is just fantastic. And what I get to do is focus on a very relatively narrow slice of what's on the table at COP26. But what I want to do is, I hope you can all see that well. I'm going to make you all go away for a moment. There we go. Is focus on, first of all, understanding what NDCs are. So I'm sure by now, as Hillstappers, you have heard the acronym NDCs or nationally determined contributions. Those are what I think of as the backbone of the Paris Agreement. So on the left-hand side of the bullets, I want to build up to add to Jen's introduction of the institutions, the governance institutions and the treaties like the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol because often when we think of the Paris Agreement, many don't understand that the Paris Agreement is under UNFCCC's umbrella. And so when we think of NDCs, I'm going to encourage you all when watching their negotiation at this COP but also the political actions on them at this COP, I'm going to encourage you to reach back and think about how these NDCs build on particularly articles four and 12 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or the UNFCCC in those where there's commitments and reporting articles that did create commitments to share information between countries, just not targets, which is where the Kyoto Protocol added with its mitigation targets, what we're called quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments, easier to say targets. So we know that the protocol has functionally sunset at this point because with the Paris Agreement, specifically starting in 2020, the NDCs, the nationally determined contributions are to set out each country's defined contribution to what you see on the right hand side of the screen under Paris Agreement Article Three as nationally determined contributions to the global response to climate change. That's what we're working toward. All parties are to undertake and communicate ambitious efforts as defined in articles four. So that's the mitigation article. Article seven, adaptation. Article nine, finance. Article 10, capacity building. Article 11, technology transfer and development. And article 13 on transparency, another way of safe reporting. And they're communicating these ambitious efforts with a view to achieving the purpose of article two in the agreement. And that's where by now everybody's heard the phrase well below two C, one of the temperature goals, but it's also with the aim of trying to keep us closer to 1.5. So the key thing about these NDCs is that next sentence that I've told that the efforts of all parties, not just the developed parties as were the Kyoto Protocol targets applied to, but all parties will represent a progression over time. At the same time, recognizing the need to support developing countries who haven't had these types of quantitative in particular mitigation targets to me, contributions to me. Okay, so hopefully I've pitched the idea that the NDCs don't come out of nowhere under the Paris Agreement. They actually build on the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocols evolving approach to mitigation and adaptation. So I do wanna, the third bullet you're gonna hear a lot especially in the United States about how the Paris Agreement is an autumn up agreement. The idea versus top down of the Kyoto Protocol which had a common collective around 5% reduction in a commitment period off of a baseline of 1990 of a greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, what is different about the NDCs under the Paris Agreement is that each party, as I just read in article three and as it references and intersects with those other articles has the shall requirement to submit, to prepare and submit an NDC every five years. But they define, each party defines what they will do in those five years. And that's what makes it autumn up when many people say. The other piece about that is you may have heard about differentiation under the UNFCCC and article three, the principal section. There's the common but different responsibilities and respective capabilities or capacities, CBDRRC. Recognizing that one, there are historical polluters and so arguably they have put more carbon dioxide up to the atmosphere and thus are more responsible for it. Two, there's the other differentiation by wealth and technological capacity. The idea being that if you have more wealth that you have more responsibility because of your ability to address the problem. So that differentiation will come back to and that you'll see play out at COP26. Last two points I wanna make before turning to what's on the table is that it's very important when thinking about the NDCs and when tracking the negotiations at COP26 and Glasgow that you keep in mind the article 13 enhanced transparency framework it's called or ETF sometimes. But the idea is that's where reporting is going on. And for me, I'm always looking when I'm looking at what's being negotiated about what should be in an NDC, I'm always pairing that with what then a country who submits their NDC then has obligations under article 13 to report out on them. So keep those two in mind and link them. And the final link would be what I think of this with NDCs as the backbone of the Paris Agreement and article 13's transparency as a poor process requirement and ambition driver that article 14's global stock take is every five year session where all parties to the Paris Agreement review a range of documentation that looks at the cumulative progress over time toward that article two temperature goal and take stock of whether how close they are not. Note, I keep saying cumulative and all parties the article four global stock take is not meant to be individual review of a country's progress that's coming out through MRV requirements in article 13. But this is a cumulative stock take that then says, okay, we as a world or parties to the Paris Agreement have not achieved well below to see what more do each of us have to do to increase our ambition. This graphic from the World Resources Institute is one I love to share with people to show this ambition cycle that you're seeing negotiated at COP26. So notice it starts with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and notice how 2020 was that date that is a milestone for communicating new or updated NDCs. Just a quick going back behind 2015 almost all countries file were called intended high NDCs and that helps set the negotiating table and when they ratified submitted the articles of ratification to the UN to be bound by the Paris Agreement those countries had a choice they could communicate new or updated NDCs then or they could simply say, no, we'll stick with our INDCs 2020. Most countries stuck with their INDCs essentially waived their one converted them to real NDCs. And so 2020 is slash was the year to update that that was to have happened at COP26 which as we all know was intended to have last year at this time. And so that's why COP26 would argue to you that when we're talking about NDCs that what's on the table is more about the politics of getting countries to communicate these more ambitious NDCs versus the negotiations of the specifics of the Paris rulebook to define what the NDCs look like. Last thing I wanna point out on the slide as parties to the Paris Agreement make their way to the article four goal of mid-century net zero emissions and climate resilience that the way the NDCs and the global stock take work is you have the NDCs work with 2020 now it's gonna be more 2021. And then three years later mid cycle before you have to file a new NDC every five years the global stock take takes place. And as I said a moment ago at the stock take all parties will decide how much more each party needs to commit to to reach the article to well article to well below two C goals or really striving for 1.5 C. So see how this happens over time and the idea is some people call the efficient cycle some people call it a ratchet. But the idea is that through this process of filing new more ambitious NDCs and then taking cumulative stock as the parties to the Paris Agreement on whether or not we've achieved the article two goals then we'll know how to ratchet up or increase the ambition of individual countries NDCs. So when we look at the political context of COP 26 what we see is that a number of countries have submitted revised or new NDCs. And this is data taken from Climate Action Tracker NGO I recommend bookmarking their site and keeping track of it. They assess NDCs with respect to not only the actual content of it here on the right side of the screen you see the comparison of the former US NDC and the brand new one so 2016 versus 2021. And what they do what they have shown is that a number of countries have proposed and submitted stronger targets others have not. So that is something to keep an eye on because that is a major diplomatic ambition of the UK presidency is to get more NDC new NDCs announced and to have most if not all of them to have stronger targets. So submitted stronger targets. In my last one minute with you right now and of course I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm gonna call your attention to this report that came out just about a little over a month ago by the secretariat. It's what's called a synthesis report. And what they did is they looked at the NDCs the new NDCs that had been filed. There's a public registry for them you can find them on the UNFCCC website. And that was through July end of July. So it's always a little dated but there were some 86 new and updated NDCs from 113 parties. They covered about 93% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is they represent a 12% decrease by 2030. So the NDCs the contributions that individual countries these individual countries had made as you can see in that red kind of triangle in the graphic on the right. They represent a decrease from what would have happened by 2030 absent those NDCs. But of course the glass half empty part of this is what you see below that red triangle. There's still a long way to go and I'm happy to talk about this more when answering questions. Because I do wanna get to the last slide I have to share with you today which is looking at what I would call the treaty context versus the political context. So this is what is literally on the negotiation table under the Paris rulebook. And it's called common time frames. And it's a relatively straightforward idea, right? That right now we have NDCs from many, many countries that are on different time frames. Some have a different baseline year. Some have a different out year 2025, 2030. And so the parties are still negotiating. They have agreed that beginning in 2031. So in the next NDC cycle, starting in 2031 those NDCs will have to be on a common timeframe that the parties agreed to in the Paris rulebook but they have not agreed. And that's what is the main negotiating item that you could follow. And especially through the US delegation who's negotiating on it, see where they are going. The other thing I wanna point out in that lower part of the right hand screen is that while this is a narrow question in some ways it obviously has huge impacts in our ability to compare what countries are doing and to do good global stock takes. So one is, you know that article six, the market mechanisms which we'll get to next in the webinar it would, they would be easier to understand and to follow and to track, to monitor and review if they were based on NDCs that had common time frames. Likewise, the biennial transparency reports that required a parties under article 13 that ETF enhanced transparency framework that would be easier if they had common time frames. And of course I've already mentioned the global stock take. So in sum, this last slide is narrow but has tentacles across the major components of the Paris agreement. And so watching this particular agenda item on the NDC negotiation is worthwhile. But in the grand scheme of things that's why you saw more slides on it. The real object with NDCs at COP26 is to achieve what you saw on that timeframe for 2020 because we're a year behind and a pandemic recovering from. And so what we're looking for is the political speeches like at the high level segment or the world leaders summit that Jen mentioned where they announced new and more ambitious NDCs. And with that, I'll stop past the baton to article six. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you very much for that very clear explanation. And also a good reminder, Tracy just presented some very nice slides with lots of great information. Jen did the same thing Derek's about to. So if anyone would like to go back and revisit the slides in addition to the archived webcast being available online at www.esa.org can also review all of the presentation materials. In fact, they're already posted. So not to steal any of Derek's thunder but all of that is available online of course. Before I introduce Derek, I would just like to remind everyone if they have a question, there are two ways to ask it. The first is by following us on Twitter at EESI online. The second way is to send us an email. The email address to use is askask at EESI.org and we're getting a bunch. So we really appreciate it. And I think we'll find ways to incorporate several of them into the Q and A. Our third panelist today is Derek Rukoff. Derek is a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute with over 20 years of experience in energy and climate policy. His current work focuses on the effective design and implementation of environmental market mechanisms and assessing subnational and local climate mitigation policies. He has advised numerous state national multinational policy initiatives related to carbon markets, greenhouse gas accounting and low carbon development. Derek, welcome to the briefing today. I will turn it over to you. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today. So I'm going to talk about Article 6. Perhaps the big story of the last two cops, COP 24 and 25, was the failure of negotiators to reach agreement on Article 6. And so it's back on the agenda this time at COP 26. So what I'm going to do is dive in a bit of a deep dive on what Article 6 is, why it matters and what the issues are that have held up negotiations so far, where they might land in Glasgow. So what is Article 6? It's a section of the Paris Agreement that formally recognizes the possibility for countries to voluntarily cooperate in the achievement of their NDCs that Tracy just talked about with the idea of allowing for a higher ambition. So the idea is that countries can jointly come together to reach their common NDC goals and achieve economies through that cooperation that would allow them to raise the bar going forward in terms of setting more aggressive emission reduction targets. And so it's largely, when we talk about international cooperation, in effect what we're talking about in most cases here is international emissions trading. So there are three sections of Article 6 that set out three different mechanisms by which cooperation could occur. The first is Article 6.2. And that's basically recognizing voluntary arrangements between two or more countries that could take place where they voluntarily agree to engage in trades or transfers of what are called mitigation outcomes. And so these arrangements would not be centrally administered. They'd basically be set up by the countries themselves but Article 6.2 sets out some principles and general criteria under which those arrangements could happen. Article 6.4 establishes a separate mechanism. This would be a centrally administered mechanism for the creation and transfer of emission reduction credits. So if you're familiar with the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism, which was this global carbon offsetting program that was established under Kyoto, Article 6.4 is basically the successor to that. And it would be centrally administered and it would allow, for example, countries that may not have the capacity to develop full-fledged emissions trading systems to still participate in these international cooperative arrangements. And then finally, Article 6.8 would recognize opportunities for non-market approaches. That is, you could have arrangements where one country might agree to invest in climate change mitigation efforts in another country. It might be, the funding may be contingent upon the performance of those mitigation activities but there would be no transfer of the mitigation outcomes to the funding country. Those emission reductions, for example, would stay in the country where the activities are going on. So it's a kind of climate finance that's anticipated there. So why does Article 6 matter? I would say first and foremost, it's a foundation for cooperation. It's probably not overstating things too much to say that the symbolic value here is as important as anything else. That is, it lays a foundation for cooperative approaches and a failure to reach agreement here would cast a poll, I think, over future efforts at a collective response to climate change, which ultimately is what we need. But the key motivating idea here is this idea of gains from trade. This idea that each country trying to achieve their indices individually on their own could do that but it could be much more cost-effective to achieve that same level of emission reductions collectively if countries are allowed to trade mitigation outcomes essentially. And there have been a study or two trying to quantify that potential there suggesting that we could achieve 50% more reductions than are in the current indices in 2030 for the same cost if you implemented a kind of global emissions trading system. And then of course, that kind of hot topic on the table these days going into COP26 is this idea of net zero. Globally, we have to get to net zero emissions around the middle of the century. That means balancing emissions with carbon dioxide removal. And if you're thinking about how to efficiently achieve that balance across the world, carbon markets are probably the most effective efficient way to do that and it's important to get that foundation correct. And then finally, just business opportunities. Even when the United States did not participate directly in Kyoto protocol, for example, US businesses were front and center in engaging in these markets, making these clean energy investments under this market mechanism that was established under Kyoto. The same could kinds of opportunities to be available under the Paris Agreement with an agreement on order of the sets. So what are the issues? They're really two big ones. I would say one is coming to an agreement on how to avoid double counting emission reductions. So just to be clear, when we say negotiators have failed to reach agreement, what they have failed to reach agreement on is essentially what's called the rule book for how these mechanisms should be implemented. And in particular, the accounting that needs to be done to ensure that these mechanisms are effective. So avoiding double counting has been a real hang up in the negotiations so far. The other big issue is what to do about all these Kyoto era emission reduction credits. So the Kyoto protocol established this kind of global emissions trading system. It generated a lot of emission reduction credits that are basically still out there, unsold, unbought. And there's a big question about can they be recognized in the Paris regime? So that's a roadblock in the negotiations as well. Also on the agenda is this question of adaptation financing. So there's a stipulation that for article 6.4 every time a credit is generated and sold that a share of the proceeds from those sales goes into this global adaptation funds. And there's a question of whether that should apply to article 6.2 as well. And I put an asterisk here because I think if you talked to the negotiators they would actually say this is actually a top tier issue. One of the big three. And to some extent that's true. I think the challenge here is that it's connected to other negotiating streams around climate finance and adaptation finance. And I think it's a bit of a bargaining chip within the context of article 6. And in short, I would say my opinion but my sense is if the negotiators reach an agreement on these first two issues, double counting and Kyoto credits that we're not gonna see a breakdown in the outcome over this adaptation financing question. They'll find a solution to that. Whereas the reverse is not true. I think if negotiators can't get to agreement on those first two issues we could again see a breakdown in the negotiations and a failure to get an agreement on the rule book again. Some other issues being negotiated are some details around the crediting rules and standards for that article 6.4 mechanism. And then this question there's this language in the Paris agreement related to article 6.4 saying that this mechanism has to deliver an overall mitigation in global emissions. And the negotiators are still talking about what that means exactly. And also whether it should also apply to article 6.2 that's one of the hangups here. So diving in a bit on the big issues, double counting in some ways this is really simple and even this diagram here over complicates it. The basic idea is that no two countries should be counting the same emission reductions towards achievement of their indices. And that may seem obvious, right? So if that happens then the world would be better off if countries simply achieved their indices individually and didn't count reductions in another country. So within an international trading system the idea is there has to be some kind of accounting system in place. The idea is that you could have country A the seller country maybe overachieving against their NDC target their emission reduction target here by 30 tons. So they then have 30 extra tons that they could transfer to a buyer country who maybe doesn't quite get all the way to their emissions target but because they can acquire these emission reductions from the first country they can claim to admit their target both countries nominally meet their target and the atmosphere sees the same level of emissions as if they had done everything by themselves. The term of art within the negotiations is that these countries would apply what are called corresponding adjustments that is accounting adjustments in their ledgers used to track their progress towards the achievement of their NDC targets and sort things out that way. So that sounds straightforward. At least the idea that you shouldn't have double counting seems obvious. So what are the issues here? Well, there are some complications. The first is that NDCs as Tracy was alluding to come in all shapes and sizes. It's a bottom up approach. So the motivating idea here is each country gets to specify in their own terms what they're gonna contribute to climate change mitigation. And this means we have all kinds of targets specified for single years. So there's a question of how you sort out the accounting in the interim years leading up to say 2025 or 2030 when these targets are set. Some countries have renewable energy generation targets. So it's not even specified in greenhouse gas reductions or they promise to do some things without quantitative metrics attached. So that creates challenges. The solutions are mostly technical and I think can be sorted out. The big issue in the negotiations here is this second issue, which is what to do about mitigation that may occur outside the scope of the countries NDC. And that every country has set an economy wide greenhouse gas emission reduction target. In many cases, they focus on particular sectors. And you can argue that if mitigation is occurring outside those sectors and it's transferred that there's no actual double counting going on, right? It's not occurring within the scope of the NDC. Two big challenges there. One is it's not always easy to determine what's inside or outside. And the other issue that's pertinent for the goals of the Paris Agreement are that if you allow those transfers to occur then the countries that do not have economy wide NDCs have a disincentive against expanding the scope of their NDCs over time because then they'll have to start accounting for these transfers. So it creates this kind of perverse incentive against this raising of ambition idea. And so that solution, that's more or less a consensus solution at this point at least for article 6.2 is a kind of Gordian knot approach that says, okay, we're gonna apply corresponding adjustments in all cases, whether it's inside or outside and just get rid of this potential disincentive. But like I said, that's the consensus for article 6.2 for some rather arcane reasons related to the wording in the Paris Agreement. It's not clear if that same approach should apply to article 6.4. And you have a couple of countries, Brazil in particular, India as well, arguing that that's a fine approach for article 6.2 but on article 6.4, it really does matter whether their mitigation occurs inside or outside of the scope of the NDC. Corresponding adjustments should not be required for mitigation occurring outside. And oh, by the way, Brazil has a very generous interpretation for what it means for mitigation to be outside the scope. So that's the hang up here. No one is actually saying that double counting is okay and it should be allowed. It's kind of a difference in perspective. But in so many words, Brazil and India are arguing for an approach that would tacitly allow for double counting to occur without getting into all 20 detailed accounting questions. So what are the possible outcomes? There is some indication that Brazil may be backing off its hard line stance that it's taken in the last two negotiations and prevented a consensus on the rule book here. But it could be that we ended kind of a landing zone where you have some flexibility that tacitly allows double counting for a limited period and maybe put some constraints on this perverse incentive issue, what counts as inside or outside the scope of the NPCs. The next big issue is this issue of the carryover of these Kyoto era credits for emission reductions. Essentially we have this really long market. And the issue here is essentially countries have specified these NDCs, these targets for reducing emissions. But I would say nearly all cases, they have not set those targets anticipating that they would be able to kind of use all this huge backlog of credits. And we're talking billions of tons here towards the achievement of those NDCs. And so the concern is that if you allow all these units to carry forward, essentially it would allow collectively countries to relax their efforts in actually getting the emission reductions that their NDCs imply. And means essentially it will delay action even further in terms of getting to real emission reductions. And it's sort of all on paper at this point because those credits represent emission reductions that have already occurred. And in some cases, you know, there's questions about whether they even occurred at all given some of the concerns around the Kyoto protocol clean development mechanism and the accounting approaches there. So it's an issue with big environmental integrity implications, but of course, you can understand from the point of view of the countries that are trying to sell these credits with private sector actors. In many cases, they have an interest in seeing some recognition and value to those credits. So that's essentially what's at stake here. There's two, there's a couple of issues here. So one is transitioning the credits themselves. There's a separate question around transitioning the mitigation projects that generated the credits can they continue to receive credits going forward? But it's all essentially the same question of, how far this sets back progress in actually reducing emissions versus balancing the interests of the folks who made these investments prior. You know, in terms of who's on which side in the negotiations, it's US, EU and some other countries that oppose carryover, but you have like Brazil, India, China and Australia, for example, arguing that there should be at least some carryover. Where might things lands? Again, probably some kind of compromise here, perhaps limiting that pool of credits that can be transferred over in the projects themselves. It's possible, I suppose to see these units put into some kind of reserve that might be drawn upon if mitigation costs become too high. We'll see if that happens. But that's probably the most likely outcome is some compromise that would allow limited carryover but sets real constraints around it. So other issues, when is this adaptation finance issue I alluded to? Again, the real question here is whether this share proceeds that stipulated for article 6.4 should also apply to article 6.2 transfers which are not centrally administered. You know, one concern is that this requirement creates an uneven playing field. So it would be better if we had sort of the same rules for everything but there are concerns among some parties including the United States that that could set up roadblocks for 6.2 cooperation. And you know, the argument essentially there are these separate tracks addressing adaptation and climate finance and this issue should really be addressed there. But there are folks especially in the developing country negotiating blocks that want to see a steady stream of committed financing and this is one way to kind of lock in that stream of adaptation finance. And so that's what's on the table. And then there's this OMGE thing the overall mitigation global emissions. How most people are interpreting that is, you know, if you look at these transfers that might occur, you know going back to that illustration if there are 30 tons that are transferred from country A OMGE would mean that country B only receives 20 tons. Right, so there'd be 10 tons that basically go to, you know contributing to extra mitigation above and beyond what countries are counting in their NDCs and that's called an overall mitigation global emissions. It's a way to kind of leverage these markets to raise ambition but it's only stipulated for Article 6.4. Again, the question is should we create a level playing field and do the same thing for Article 6.2? Most likely where things will land is an agreement that encourages the application of both of these things to Article 6.2 but doesn't actually require them that might require some monitoring and reporting you know, requiring countries to report whether they're actually doing it or not to at least provide some transparency there. Then finally, Article 6.4 rules and standards this is mostly technical stuff but the motivating idea here is let's not repeat some of the same mistakes that plagued the clean development mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. You know, there's some studies suggesting that maybe up to 70% of the credits issued under that program did not represent real additional emission reductions. They probably would have happened anyway. It's a fuzzy number but it's a concern for the integrity of these markets and so there's some interests. Again, primarily US, EU and having these rules be fairly robust and that's on the table as well. So looking forward, one thing that's important to note here is that, you know, we're talking about the rule book. This will lay a foundation for international cooperation but it's still, and it's important to have that foundation but it's still to be determined, you know how much these different mechanisms will be taken up by countries and how much international cooperation we'll see. And a big question is how and whether countries will use Article 6 to effectively raise global ambition and not just use it as a way to more cheaply achieve what they've already committed to do. And that's gonna be a big kind of policy question going forward. It's gonna require ongoing efforts, I would say to continue to build trust, institutional capacity and building some of these networks, I would say at bilateral and regional levels on, you know, before you can get to a global system. So I will leave it there. I'm happy to answer questions. Let me know if anything was not clear in what I presented. Thank you. Thank you, Derek. And oh, we will definitely get to questions. But before we do, we are gonna turn back to Jen, our first panelist. Jen Allen is a strategic advisor and team leader with Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Jen, I'll welcome you back to the panel. I think you have some additional comments you'd like to share about climate finance. Thanks, yeah. And this will be fairly brief, just mostly to give people an idea of the extent of all the finance issues that are on this very packed agenda. So there we go. So why do we need climate finance beyond all of the promises and rules that we have to provide it? It's largely because we developed countries, I should say, industrialized using fossil fuels. And now we're asking developing countries to undertake a different model of development that doesn't use fossil fuels while feeding their populations and trying to lift people out of poverty. So asking them essentially to use an untested model of development in a globalized world. And so for that ask comes finance and technological support and capacity building support, which those three things together, the finance, the technology and the capacity building are often called means of implementation. So generally these means of implementation and finance also specifically goes for support to reduce emissions. So developing countries are developing in a way that also reduces their emissions. And for adaptation to build resilience to the effects of climate change because more and more we're seeing that climate change is already having significant impacts on people and there's economic hits there as well. I should also add that there's a third pillar called loss and damage, which is permanent effects of climate change. This could be from a rapid onset event like a extreme weather event where maybe cities are lost, lives are lost, economic activity is lost or slow onset events. So you could think of maybe sea level rise for a small island stage or low or Delta like in Bangladesh where land is being lost or saltwater is permeating freshwater drinking sources. So these are permanent effects of climate change. And increasingly, especially in that second week what we'll hear is calls for finance to support loss and damage. So finances on the agenda across a lot of these items to support developing country action. This is a longstanding demand of developing countries that in exchange for their action and they're already doing a lot, they need the support in order to continue to act on climate change. So countries said 10 years ago that they would provide $100 billion a year by 2020. It would either be provided or mobilized meaning that the country would mobilize a private sector investment. 10 years on and the deadline is passed, we haven't met the goal. So this graph here is from the OECD that calculates climate finance flows and we're shy of 80 billion. And the thing is that strikes me about this graph is that it's pretty stagnant. 2018 looks a lot like 2019. So it's not like this has been sort of steadily growing and we're almost there. And so this is a, it's a matter of trust essentially in the negotiations that developing countries are starting to say, well, why would we take on more reporting requirements? For example, when we don't know if there's support to help us for that and why are we taking on more commitments at a time when developed countries haven't met this longstanding promise. So it's really becoming crucial for an issue in the negotiations. One of those cornerstone issues that if this continues to fester it will start to permeate the negotiation dynamics in other areas. Part of the sticking point as well with this 100 billion goal is that a lot of it is coming in the forms of loans that have to be paid back rather than in the forms of grants. And so it's actually increasing the debt burden of a lot of developing countries as well. So part of their call is also to kind of start rebalancing that towards grants. We've seen a little bit of movement on this in recent weeks. So the US has promised that it will put in an additional 11.4 billion by 2024. And the EU has said that it will put in an additional 4.7 billion up to 2027 which will add up to about 25 billion a year. So we are seeing some movement on this. Maybe not still enough to get us quite to that 100 billion goal. So amongst all those leaders' statements hopefully there will be financial pledges coming. And that might actually tell us what kind of cop we're in for. But like I said, this is a packed agenda and finance is such a key cornerstone of it that there are a lot of other financial agenda items and priorities at this meeting. And almost all of these will be negotiated in the second year or second week. Sorry, might feel like a year but a second week. One will be providing guidance to the global environmental facility and to the Green Climate Fund. These two things together, these two organizations form the financial mechanism. So there are two operating entities of the financial mechanism. And they work for and sort of at the behest of the COP and the CMA. So the COP gives them guidance essentially. Here's what we would like your priorities to be while you're spending all of the developed countries money while you're distributing climate finance. So they provide this guidance they haven't been able to because of the pandemic. So they have to do that this COP. For the first time ever, there will be reports which I think is already on the UNFCCC website that is an assessment of developing countries' needs. And it's the first time that they've put this report together. The Standing Committee on Finance has been working on this not without sort of some controversies because loss and damage was excluded from the report despite strong calls from the African group to put it in. But it will give us a sense for the first time of what level of finance we might actually be looking at here in terms of what developing countries need. There will also be a report published that provides another overview of climate finance flows. You might wonder why we need more because the OECD has crunched numbers already. One of the tricks of this is that there isn't actually an agreed definition of what climate finance is. So depending on who's counting and how they're defining it, the numbers vary. So the UNFCCC will put out its own report, I think again from the Standing Committee on Finance of what climate finance looks like. And it also will be breaking it down by things like grants versus loans. So there's a huge amount of finance happening and it's going to be a really busy part of the agenda for the last two week or for the last week. And absolutely guaranteed finance will be a crucial part of that last package of decisions that come together. So thank you very much and I will hand back I think to Dan now. Great, thank you very much, Jen for that. A lot of issues have come up today. Our session goes until 2.30. There's obviously a ton of things that will be discussed. Just as a quick reminder, we had a briefing last Friday about climate adaptation, specifically in the issues that will be sort of discussed at COP26 and we had one just on Wednesday about international climate finance. And that issue that Jen just mentioned, what is international climate finance? What counts and what doesn't counts was a major topic of discussion amongst our panelists. So if you would like to go into depth around adaptation or finance or even biodiversity loss, we've covered them in our briefings recently in the lead up to COP26. So I encourage everyone to visit us online at www.esi.org and also sign up for our newsletter, Climate Change Solutions and our new daily newsletter, Glasgow Dispatch that will be issued every day during COP. We are now going to transition to Q&A. So I invite Jen and Derek and Tracy to turn their videos back on. And also my colleague, Anna McGinn. You might remember Anna, she joined me on Friday for the briefing about adaptation and she is back. She's our policy manager here at EESI and she will be leading our Q&A today with our great panelists. So Anna, welcome to the briefing and take it away. Great, thanks Dan. Really excited about this Q&A. We're hoping to dive into even more of the areas of the negotiations that we haven't covered yet. And with that, I'll just jump right in. So we heard Jen mention the term loss and damage. And so I wanna get into that a little bit more. What do we expect to see on loss and damage at COP26? And kind of maybe a little bit more on why that's important to the different parties that will be present. So maybe Tracy, we could start with you and then we can jump to Jen and Derek. Thanks, thanks Anna. Well, I think Jen got it right. So loss and damage is that permanent loss that one cannot adapt to, the countries cannot adapt to. And we tend to think about it in sudden events, quite honestly, and that's a pretty myopic view, but sudden extreme weather events and those losses. But I tend to think of it in terms of sea level price and Kiribati and the loss of not only land, but sovereignty, sovereign land, ways of life, traditional hunting and fishing or not even traditional, right? Just long health ways in which people have nourished themselves and labored. So those are the kinds of issues that sit within the structure that's called the WIM, Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage that was created back in the Warsaw COP COP 19 two years before Paris to essentially be that committee, if you will, a processing entity for the parties to make recommendations to the COP about how to proceed on loss and damage. So I know, I mean, Jen's point in relating it to finance, I think that's the major thing. So for years of, one of the breakthroughs of the Paris Agreement for those who were advocating for attention and remedies quite honestly for loss and damage was creation of what is article eight which is on loss and damage. Prior to that, loss and damage had always been treated by the UNFCCC as a sub-issue under adaptation. So Paris represented a step-wise change that way. So then the next step, still governed by the activities at the Warsaw, WIM X comments call executive committee is about the request for financing and separate financing. That sense of liability between developed and developing country was roundly rejected when the Paris Agreement was adopted in that decision one. I forget which paragraph it is, paragraph 50 something probably, Jen, right? But it was unmitigated in saying, no, this does not, in adopting article eight does not mean that developed countries are liable to developing countries for climate change, loss and damage. But the strategy at this point is to go into the individual conversations like in finance and to propose ways to come up with creative ways to do financing specifically for loss and damage. And then I guess it would also be the Santiago network. So out of COP 25 of a network to educate people about educate countries about loss and damage to share exchange, that is being stood up at this point. Those are the two things I can think of. I'd be curious what other folks have to say. Jen or Derek, do you have anything you'd like to add on that one? No, I think Tracy's got it on that, yeah. Okay, perfect. So the next question we have for you all is, of course we have a lot of congressional staff that are tuning in today. And they might be interested in tracking specific topic areas that perhaps align with the work they're doing on Capitol Hill. So here could be agriculture, land use, adaptation, energy, maybe ocean issues. Are there specific, I mean, I just listed a lot of things but could you generally provide kind of guidance on if they're interested in one of those topics, kind of how to tune in, are there specific areas the negotiations keep track of or other areas of the COP that they should keep track of? And more broadly, any ideas that you have for congressional staff on effectively engaging with COP26. Jen, maybe we could start with you and then we'll jump to Derek and then Tracy. Sure, yeah, and there are a range of issues that even aren't on the formal agenda that the COP presidency is keen to put forward. I think now it's cold cars, cash and trees or something is the tagline. And so I'd recommend a few. So one is the official UNFCCC website and there will be information there about engaging virtually to the extent some events are webcast for example, but also the COP presidency's website because they will have those more thematic initiatives that they're trying to launch around coalitions for moving past coal or the beyond oil and gas coalition that might be launched. And I guess I should say my own, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, we provide a daily report of what happens in the negotiations. So as much as we can, who said what type of product? So we don't leave the venue until it's published. So it's out every day. Yeah, I'm not sure I have too much to add other than a big part of COPS is not just the negotiations but also the site events. And I would expect a lot of the site events this year to have kind of a virtual attendance option for them. So definitely check out the agenda of site events there which they cover sort of every issue under the sign including land use, agriculture, forestry and all those kinds of issues as they relate to the negotiations. So yeah, look there as well. And I would just add I think two kind of deeper dive points which is if you go to the UNFCC website as Jen was recommending, one, you'll find the link to C O R's S capital S E O R S and that's where you'll find site event information. You'll also see links for mandated events, something that's mandated out of a COP decision. So it's not a site event per se but you'll also find the annotated agendas for each of these bodies that Jen laid out at the beginning at the top of the hour. So for the COP, the CMP, the protocol entity, the COP protocol, the CMA for the agreement and then the sub bodies, substan, SBTI. If you click on those agendas especially if you start at the sub bodies that's where you're gonna find the more granular agenda items that will relate to your interests. And here's the pro tip. Then after you see it on the agenda skip down to the bottom where the annotations are and that's where you're gonna find synthesis reports like the one I mentioned on the NDC synthesis in September. You're gonna find draft recommendations. You're gonna find products for example if you're looking at finance for the biennial assessment report for the Jen mentioned out of the standing committee on finance. Basically everything you could want and because I'll return back to what Jen said. Well the UK presidency on its website has its campaigns and I like the cash, et cetera. I hadn't heard it said that way. At the UNFCCC site, you're gonna have to dig a little deeper because that's what's going on in the negotiations. So those annotations will show you how for example the Coronavia Joint Work on Agriculture. So I will pop up on your alt F search when you're on that page. But then you gotta look at the annotations to see what they're actually doing at the COP or in SUPSTA at that time. That's how you'll go forward. And I think you'll get more, I don't know, meat tofu whereas the campaigns are a little more comms oriented. Awesome, thank you. I think between all across all your answers people should have plenty of homework to do to dive in. So the next topic I wanna dive into is how science is integrated into the COP process. So specifically we saw that the most recent element of the IPCC's six assessment report came out not too long ago. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how these IPCC reports and other scientific reports feed into what happens at the COP and more broadly how science is integrated or not into different parts of the negotiations. And we also got a audience question that feeds into this so I'll share that as well that we've perhaps are warming faster than some of these reports and past reports have shown or modeled. So how do we integrate new projections or how did new projections inform global stocktake ratcheting up ambition, those sorts of things? Maybe we can start with Derek. And that was a lot of questions. So we can pause for a moment too for everyone to have a chance but maybe we'll start with Derek and then jump to Jen and to Tracy. Yeah, others may have sort of a more comprehensive answer than I can offer, but it's the IPCC summary of the science has been sort of the guide star for the negotiations from the beginning under the Framework Convention of Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, article four, the goal that stipulated there to achieve a balance between emissions and removals by the middle of the century in order to limit global warming well below two degrees and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees. I think reflects the progression of the science up to the Paris Agreement where for I would say for a decade or more the goal is really the conversations were more around two degrees. And I think with respect to the one comment that suggests we may be warming faster than we expected that's reflected in this Paris Agreement goal. And I think most of the conversation in the last few years has really been, the Paris Agreement says as close as possible to 1.5, everyone's talking about 1.5. And I think that's gonna be reflected in the global stock take. There are some larger questions around the netting of emissions with removals in the AR6. Well, there was a port two years ago, three years ago the IPCC 1.53 report suggesting different pathways by which that could be achieved. AR6 is sort of coming in with some updates on the science there. We don't have the working group three report which is about implementation which is unfortunate I think going into this cup. But it's the scientific understanding that's been raised in those reports. I think it's very much informing how folks are thinking about the upcoming global stock take for example. Yeah, I think I'll just add a couple flag points maybe in terms of what is on the agenda. There is an agenda item called the long-term review of the adequacy of the global goal which is a two or 1.5 degree goal adequate. And this was initially conducted 2013 to 2015 and it was one of the main reasons why we see 1.5 degrees in the Paris Agreement that they sort of managed to talk about 1.5 in a way that other countries could actually agree to. And so that's actually happening again and we'll have a lot of scientific input. The global stock take like Derek mentioned is going to have at least a year long maybe an 18 month long scientific phase. And so we've had these structured expert dialogues for this long-term review and we're having the scientific phase for the global stock take which actually will start next year. So there's a lot of input to get more science into the system. I mean, to some extent we already know what's many of the issues are and so the science just adds the urgency to it. But yeah, there's going to be an awful lot of opportunities for scientists at future cops. And just to tag team with Jen that first item is a fascinating one. And as she pointed out, it moved the dial or the needle on the dial on 1.5. So that is taking place and I'm pretty sure that's under the subset agenda. So for those of you who recall my pro tip about annotated agendas, go to the subset of agenda and look at that. And then second, Jen, I also think of the standing subset agenda item on research and systematic observation. So that's an area where those folks gather and do work and set out a work plan for educating a policy makers on the latest science. And then I guess the last thing and I have to be honest I can attend the second 25, but there is that first day and I'm pretty sure that's a mandated event where essentially it's a teaching with quite a few scientists. It's not just the IPCC or I shouldn't say that. It's not just what we think about in terms of warming. For example, I heard it about in terms of the cryosphere report and a lot of the cryosphere scientists who are there, but it's intended to be an opportunity to make it very easy for policy makers in residence at the cop to take up this information and to discuss it with the people who are writing these reports. And that's going to happen this year. I just don't know the day. Oh, I'm sorry, last two things. The cop presidency, to be fair, they're having a science and innovation day. So all the programming at the, they're at the UK Pavilion in the blue zone. And I think that it's Tuesday, that's the ninth, November 9th, it's Tuesday the second week. And then I'll put in a plug for Ringo, the research and independent NGOs. We are hosting a research and action thematic day the next day, Wednesday, November 10th and featuring quite a few Ringo members whose side events have been selected on that day. So keep an eye out for that Wednesday, November 10th. Thanks, that's really interesting. We are getting a lot of questions from the audience. So I'm gonna interject real quick with one that I think is interesting because I think it gets at something that is part of a lot of conversations on or around Capitol Hill. And that's the idea of a net zero commitment. And so the question goes like this. Within the context of achieving net zero emissions in the coming decades, what is the ratio of tons of carbon sequestered to tons emitted that are sort of being negotiated or being discussed at COP26? And I think as you think about sort of your response, I think that's a really great question because that's very much a conversation in Washington. And I think it's very, I'm very interested in what your responses are to it because I think sometimes what's happening here domestically talking about net zero goals, how does it relate to what's actually being talked about at that high level at COP26? And Jen, I think if it's all right, I'd like to start with you and then we'll hear from Derek and then for sure give Tracy an opportunity to weigh in as well. Sure. I mean, the interesting thing about this is that it won't be talked about at COP in terms of what net zero is. So the Paris Agreement says to achieve a balance between emissions and removals. It doesn't say net zero. We've been calling it net zero ever since. So what that balance is, if it's we keep emitting like crazy and plants, forests like we've never seen before, or if we have reduced emissions rapidly and don't need to do a lot of offsets or tree planting, both those things count right now because we're just achieving a balance. So there is no effort right now to define net zero beyond that. Yeah, I would just add that I think a big reason for that is what Tracy was talking about that Paris Agreement is a bottom up kind of regime. So it's up to each individual country to put forward what their pledges for mitigating emissions, or investing in carbon dioxide removal, for example. And I think that this is a big question going forward, right? It's because the Paris Agreement is not taught down, we can't sort of stipulate, at least under the way it's framed today, what that global balance should be and how it's allocated amongst different countries. It's up to countries to kind of come together and agree on a common approach and then individually what their approach will be that's in line with that. So yeah, it's an excellent question. It's also a big challenge. Yeah, and I would add two points. One on the country definitions and the country negotiations. I do agree that obviously bottom up a self-determination or self-differentiation, but I also think there's some appetite to talk about this a little more seriously because of what happened under the Kyoto Protocol and there not being limits on what developed countries, annex one countries could bring back from the CDM, for example. I mean, that was actively discussed in the run-up to Kyoto and the decision. And so I do feel there's appetite there. What I wanna throw out that's a little outside here, though, but certainly something that I think Hill staffers would know about is that there's a fairly robust private market, right? Carbon markets, the voluntary effort. So Jen, for example, in the intro talked about non-state actors in this space and their increasing presence and they're being called on. So for example, the global climate action is now called, it's had different names over the years. There are two high level champions, one from the UK, one from the COP25 presidency from Chile and they are all about getting businesses to be as ambitious or more ambitious than the countries that they're headquartered in. That's everything from scope one, scope two, scope three emissions to manage that. And so they are driving these voluntary carbon markets, but the definition problem is an issue, right? So we, Jen, you mentioned, what does net zero mean? It's not actually in the Paris Agreement that way, but many are saying Paris aligned, right? It gets back to like food labeling, what's organic versus natural versus? And so I'm raising this because there's a very active, a number of credentialing authorities or entities that want to promote standards for high integrity BCMs. And they're going to be hanging out at the UK Pavilion in the blue zone, talking quite a bit during this COP. So I guess what I'm saying is, is one of the things we can look at is what's happening in the private space, whether consumers are demanding it or industry is responding to other exhortation and how definitions might have out there that could reflect what's going on in the negotiations or informant down the road. Thanks for that. And as you were, as you were, the three of you were providing your answers. We had another question came in that I think is another thing that's on people's minds. And that is, if something like net zero is basically in the eye of the beholder, each country can sort of maybe settle on a definition of balance that works for itself. What do we say to folks who might say, well, U.S. efforts to reduce emissions, they may not be as impactful when compared because of what other countries are doing. So if we're doing what we can do and other countries are making their own determinations about what they can do in terms of their contributions, what are the, it's basically I think a way to say, there may be a downside to a bottom-up approach. I don't know if anyone has any responses to that. I'm not suggesting that necessarily is where ESI is coming from, but I think it's an interesting question and I'm positive that it's being asked in U.S. policy circles. Yeah, wait. I mean, how do you answer that? Climate change is inherently and unavoidably a collective action problem, right? So how do you tackle that? We don't have a global government. This, under the Kyoto, we did manage to agree an approach while the United States did not participate that would set binding emissions limits on industrialized countries and ones that have contributed most to the problem. That's had, I would say, mixed results. And it quickly became clearer as recently as 15 years ago, as long ago as 15 years ago, that that would not be enough, especially if we look at the growth and emissions in China and other parts of the developing world. So the big advance, the big step forward with Paris was to create a regime that was inclusive, globally inclusive. And I think that's no small feat that you have basically every country in the world committing something. But yeah, then you run into the question of, all right, so how do we make sure this all heads up? And that's where these provisions around the reporting, the transparency, the ratcheting up of innovation, the global stock take come in, they're designed to push things forward. But at the end of the day, it's all contingent upon the goodwill and cooperation of countries. And that's maybe where Article 6 comes in as well, that it provides a mechanism for countries to achieve more aggressive targets than cells, but also work with other countries to bring, motivate private finance into clean technologies or low carbon development and things of that nature that can help make it easier. For the developing world, for example, to set more ambitious targets and ensure that what we're doing is part of the successful global effort. Tracy or Jen, do you have any thoughts that you would like to add to Derek's answer, which I thought was a great answer actually, thank you for that. Jen, I was gonna give you the last word. Well, I apologize, I had to answer, knock at the door there for a moment behind me. But I do, Dan, the way you phrased it, it sound hauntingly familiar to when the Senate said that they would never pass the, or ratify the Kyoto Protocol, right? Because China wasn't one of the annex one countries that would have targets underneath it. So now everybody is all in. And it could be a race to the bottom or it could be a race to the top with ambition. And that's why it takes so many nuanced pieces to it. So Article 6 will bring in a sector of countries that are going to, in theory, and I think in reality, increase their ambition if second consumers in the developed world give recognition for why China's greenhouse gas emissions are so hot, even all the products that we have that are labeled on the back of our necks from China. So I think there's that consumer movement and that growing awareness, which then has placed companies on a wide spectrum to make fairly credible commitments and to re-tool how they produce and deliver the products that we want. So I think it's messy, and I understand that that's, especially if you're in the United States where you have a constitution and statutes and regulations and courts, and it looks a little more top down that way. But that's the nature of international relations. So we're trying to find the individual pieces that hook people in and that would involve people, countries and hold them accountable for based on their interests. And that's what the NDC bottom-up approach is trying to do. Thanks, Tracy and thanks, Derek. Yeah, John, go ahead. Sarah, I was going to say, I agree with all of that. And yeah, we have a bottom-up approach because it allows all to participate. And one of the main reasons why we have a bottom-up approach is so that the US could participate. So it's a matter of catching everybody and that reporting bit will be crucial. I will add there's this weird quirk to international relations, just putting my lecturer of IR hat on, that compliance is surprisingly high even when there isn't a stick making countries do it. We don't know why, we haven't answered that question, but it's this really wonderful pattern that hopefully will work in our favor. Thanks, John. And we are at time, but we are going to fit in one more question anyway. And we're going to call it a lightning round. So we'll give you like one or two sentences each, but yeah, set your timer, Tracy. But of course, success is defined differently by every different stakeholder you might ask who's involved in this process. But from your perspective, what would be one outcome that we could look for during and as COP wraps up in just a couple weeks from now that if we see it, we might consider there to have been some success. So maybe Jen, we could start with you, then we will go to Derek and we'll wrap with Tracy. I'm going to cheat and say two things. One is that we have as near a complete Paris rule book as possible, even if they don't get all those details, we have confidence that they will have them all wrapped up really soon. And the second that those leaders leave with the sense that they actually need to start making sure they hit those targets that they've promised. Well, I can keep it short. Agreement on article six, I'm not on article six rule book. It's not just the, you're getting the rule book completed. I think it's this symbolic value of that is tremendous. And so they have to compromise a little bit, which would be unfortunate, but I think it's really important to get that done after two cops where it was not agreed. So I will draft on the good choices of Jen and Derek and add going back to what I talked about is that there are more ambitious NDCs that are announced at the World Leaders Summit and that, yes, Jen, they leave, knowing that they're now in the books and it's going up the registry. And hopefully what that means is that those negotiators who were below those folks who are speaking now have different red lines or they're not so red and so then can negotiate. And then I think it's clarify in the end. It's, I think that to make this really happen, there needs to be some type of credible path beyond a hundred billion, which is, you know, starting those negotiations right now and that it cannot be all possessional. And that we have to show that what the world did to react to the pandemic and how there was quite a bit of collaboration and work across borders that we can do the same on climate change because certainly the developing world, which right now is not benefiting from the vaccines that those of us in the developed world have been able to get, they see that divide and they're bringing that to the negotiations in particular on finance. And if we in the developed world don't see that, we're not going to get what we all just said was important to come out of COP26. I'd love to see that happen. That is a great place to end, Tracy. Thank you so much for that. Thank you, Anna for leading an amazing Q&A. Thank you, Jen, Derek and Tracy for your incredible presentations today. It's always great to, I learned so much from these webinars and today was really no exception. I'm all ready for COP26. Everybody at EESI is all ready for COP26. We will be taking a couple, we'll be taking a little bit of a break briefings wise. You can see that our next briefing is not scheduled until November 18th. That's when we will have our recap of COP26, key outcomes and what comes next. The reason for that little bit of a break is because COP26 will be happening and we have a daily newsletter to get out. So we will be working very hard on that to get Glasgow Dispatch out every day. Please take a moment to visit us online at www.esa.org. When you do, you can sign up for our climate change solutions newsletter that comes out every two weeks. You can also sign up for the daily newsletter, Glasgow Dispatch. You can also access the presentations that Jen, Derek and Tracy presented. You can also watch an archive of the webcast. This was a really great session and there was a tremendous amount of content communicated in the last 96 minutes and no doubt there's a lot to benefit and going back and looking at it again. I would also like to acknowledge that this briefing series would not be possible without our honorary co-sponsor, the British Embassy Washington. And it would definitely not be possible without our wonderful partner, Henry M. Jackson Foundation. So thank you to the British Embassy Washington and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for your generous support. I'd also like to take a moment to plug our survey. You can see on the screen right now, there is a link. If you have two moments, two minutes, if you're willing to take the survey, it's a huge help for us. You had any audio issues, video issues. If you have thoughts that you would like to share, please feel free to take a few moments and fill out that survey. We read every response and it means a lot that you help us improve our offerings. I'd also just like to acknowledge the audience today. We had probably the most robust audience Q&A. We weren't able to get to everybody, unfortunately, but we were able to integrate some of the questions into our discussion. But thank you to our online audience today for helping us navigate the Q&A. And finally, I would just like to thank everybody at ESI who makes these briefings possible. Dan O'Brien, Omri Laporte, Emma Johnson, Anna McGinn, Amber Todorov, and Savannah Bertrand. We also have three awesome interns this semester, Isabella, Valerie, and Roshni. They're huge helps and we couldn't do it without them. So thank you very much for that. We're a couple of minutes over. Apologies for that. But thought it was worth having that little bit of extra lightning round at the end there. So I wish everyone a happy Friday afternoon and a great weekend. And to those traveling to COP26, Safe Travels, and we will see everybody back on November 18th for the recap or the recap, as I like to call it. Key outcomes and what comes next. Thanks, everybody.