 Great, good morning everybody and welcome to the panel on international governance and cooperation Over the last, is it only a day? It feels like a really, it feels like a week Over the last week We've had a lot of conversations about What's missing, you know an interesting conversation yesterday about the Paris Agreement focusing on emissions Agreements and targets, but not fossil fuel supply this morning around what MDBs are using doing on a just transition But again, not necessarily a commitment to stop ramping down supply really this panel is kind of digging into the question of What are the new? Mechanisms and conversations that we need to have and Cooperation between countries in order to manage who gets to produce and how much and for how long How do we ensure that fossil fuel supply and production is managed in a way that is equitable and fair and What are the new? Agreements or mechanisms that are going to be necessary in the international space in order to in order to define that Transition and to manage that so without further ado each of our panelists are going to Speak for ten minutes, then we'll have some time for questions I'll introduce them one by one our first panelist is Natalie Jones Who was a research associate at the Center for the study of existential risk? I just wanted to say that the study of existential risk at Cambridge University and and is now With ISD a policy advisor in their sustainable energy supply team Natalie over to you Well, it's great to be here and thank you so much for the introduction. Um, so, you know, like we all heard it was Russia Shana yesterday. So, you know, you're like in the spirit of the new year in the spirit of Making a new year's resolution. I would like to just propose in this presentation some potential Resolutions that countries might like to make maybe But those will come at the end. So we have a some kind of explanation before we get to these new year's resolutions So this is really presenting a study that we did about fossil fuel production How countries are discussing fossil fuel production in their National communications under the Paris agreements. So nationally determined contributions in DCs and long-term low emissions development strategies And You know, you might ask, you know, why look at these things The Paris agreement doesn't even mention fossil fuels, you know, why would we think that these are remotely interesting? We were working of the basis of a Study done in 2018 that looked at the Paris agreement's architecture and identified ways that countries if they wanted to could start to address Apply side policies within the Paris agreement's architecture. So like Not to say that the Paris agreement was designed for this But like little hooks that countries could use if they want and you know, you know, really conditional two of these The first one is NDCs. I'm guessing everyone knows what these are LEDs Long-term low emissions development strategies Maybe not everyone knows these. I'll just briefly outline They are voluntary. So countries don't have to submit them, but they can They are longer term in time horizon than NDCs. They typically look out to mid-century and They they tend to be a bit more Like less focused on specific targets or commitments, although they can include these but a bit more, you know Longer documents with scenarios road mapping pathways all these kinds of things. So these are both sort of key international documents for countries to plan and communicate the energy transition So, you know, hypothetically Hypothetically countries can use NDCs and LEDs to communicate plans and policies for Adjust an equitable transition away from fossil fuel production These could be existing ones And you know, this could help to normalize the transition And foster international cooperation. So it could be complementary potentially to initiatives Which we're going to hear about later on the panel the Registry in the treaty in Boga, which we heard about yesterday But you know complimentary like I would not say this is the most Important thing, but I think it could be one important facet and because we've had two rounds of NDCs We had a first kind of round that countries communicated in 2015 2016 and then we had another round from 20 sort of 2020-2021 It's a good time to take stock. So have countries taken this opportunity What else are they saying about fossil fuel production in the NDCs, it's just a good time to have a look at it. So What we did we read all of the NDCs and LEDs submitted by fossil fuel producing countries only up till and including COP26 we actually Like we started off doing a keyword search and then I found that like it wasn't picking up quite everything So then I just went back and like read all of them So that was 103 Yeah, it turns out that artificial intelligence slightly helpful not not entirely so That was 103 first round NDCs 81 second round NDCs and that discrepancy in number is because some countries Some fossil fuel producing countries by the time of COP26 had not Submitted their NDC yet, but we thought it was a good cut-off date because like, you know like that was a day Where they were meant to do it and then 31 LEDs so again, it's a smaller number because they were voluntary But it's still quite a big number like a lot, you know Quite a few of these countries did actually submit LEDs, which is quite interesting We extracted all the text relating to fossil fuel production. That's actually in a database, which I'll talk about later But we did not include any text relating to consumption. So nothing about coal-fired power plants nothing about Gas turbines whatever and if it was ambiguous, we didn't include it. So if it was just like coal Then it didn't go into this and then we coded the data according to Categories that emerged as we were reading So I will share some of the kind of top-line findings, but I you know like there's a lot more in our papers So I would also encourage you to look for you know the full thing But this is the side this is the kind of Main finding that is very general, okay So what we found is that an increasing majority of NDCs from fossil fuel producing countries mentioned fossil fuel production in some way Not necessarily in a supply-side policy kind of way, which I will come to later But in some way so the middle bar here is the first round of NDCs from 2015 And you will see that slightly under half of them Countries mentioned fossil fuel production in some way By the time we get to the second round so five years later actually of the documents We analyzed a clear majority about two-thirds have mentioned fossil fuel production And it's you know an absolute increase over the first round So even if we assume that like all of those ones there that we didn't analyze because they weren't yet Communicated It's still a majority. So and then the LEDs. I mean, you know nearly Three-quarters of them mentioned fossil fuel production, which is quite interesting And we think this might be because LEDs Again can be this more kind of speculative like what what if we do this? What if we do that? Let's look at these different scenarios so they can sort of it's maybe more of a safer space potentially But again, this is you know In some way and this was a surprising result to me because I thought Persecurement doesn't mention fossil fuels. There's not going to be a lot here, but there actually is a lot Now let's let's break it down This is where it gets interesting So if we think about you know this sort of classic will not cut, but you know the kind of Fossil fuel production Reduction phase out phase down sort of policies we might think about This is how many NDCs and LEDs talk about those So it's a very small minority It's not a lot So countries are not on the whole using this opportunity well But if you are and it has been increasing so in the first round of NDCs, there were two countries In the second round of NDCs There were five countries and those were countries that we already knew about having these policies But it's it's like so like not not even all fossil fuel producing countries that have made supply-side Commitments not all of them have communicated them internationally. So there might be some kind of disconnect here like our country's thinking. Oh You know this topic isn't relevant to NDCs because NDCs are about emissions reduction So maybe there's more communication that needs to be done there or maybe Yeah, I mean there could be many things going on there. Um, but in LEDs. I mean again the proportion is a lot higher It's nearly half of LEDs do do have some kind of production wind down either not necessarily commitments again although often they are commitments such as In the case of Denmark, France, but also projection. So mapping out, you know, what different scenarios would look like I've just put some examples on the slide FYI if you're if you're interested. So on the other hand, okay So if we look at A key finding about is that many countries explicitly in their NDCs and or LEDs state an intention to continue or increase production You can see it's a lot more Than on the previous slide I've picked up some examples not to like name and well not necessarily In terms of naming and shaming but because they're quite representative of what we see for example Argentina and its NDC It literally says it's going to increase its production of natural gas as a transition fuel And yeah, not to name or shame of Argentina, but it's it's representative We included so this category has like some subcategories as well But we included in this one countries that that included some kind of mitigation or adaptation measures Such as like a net zero commitment for the oil and gas industry while not also having Production phase up because we were concerned about you know the potential for net zero commitments to basically What's the term basically be a greenwash for for for not doing supply side policies But this is disaggregated as well in the analysis We you know just for richness. We also found a lot of mentions of kind of equity things economic diversification just transition I would look at the full paper 30s and you know This is the kind of Resolution part countries, you know could improve in this regard if NDCs and LEDs will Reach their potential to help to normalize this policy in the international community and we identify a number of different areas in which Countries could include more information and or targets policies, etc. In the NDCs For the full thing. We have a working paper from 2019 one from last year We have a data sets publicly available in a peer reviewed article under revision hopefully accepted soon and Thanks so much looking forward to your questions Fantastic, thanks so much Natalie and and that Right near the end there you recommended More information on reserves and production, which is the greatest segue to Johnny West from carbon tracker Johnny is a social entrepreneur and public policy analyst of natural resources He's the lead technical advisor in the buildout of the global registry of fossil fuels that was just released last week Climate week in New York Johnny over to you. Thank you Morning everyone So as Sepura mentioned the global registry Was launched last week After considerable effort and it's really a very simple idea, which in fact the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty Incubated which is that we need a trusted public domain source Of emissions as granular as possible on the supply side I mean the the base of it we can go through all kinds of screens But the base of it is really this very simple idea trusted Public domain and I should actually I would just preface everything by saying Although carbon tracker with its partners of global energy monitor and so on we've developed it we Because we see this as being a necessary standing part of the infrastructure our real endgame is to get it transferred into An institution of you know international political legitimacy and there are kind of early stage conversations open with Various people in and around UN organizations The idea is to build this tool so that it becomes embedded in multi-party negotiations of all kinds Probably don't need to dwell on this with this crowd the mismatch between What's embedded in reserves against the current budgets? Transparency funnily enough, I'm finding is something that you've even amongst climate activists and Academics may need a little bit more expanding We can't get to Too lots of decision-making at a granular level without having Something that's in public domain and very open so all of the Data on the website is downloadable. There's an emissions model emissions factor model, which is also downloadable The idea is that we're in a virtuous circle of critique and improvement and that's actually already happened since In the last week since publication. We had someone coming in with some strong and valid objections to the way we were factoring net zero with Australian gas we were reworking and It looks as though those numbers will be better and does simply go in and replace and we also had a regulator contribute Data I actually said is all this public domain. He said well It's what I'm mandated to give anyone who asked so I'm simply saying you asked Which is an interesting dynamic? so Everything in the In the database and the set of associated Models is coming out of a Very scrappy range of sources and we do have a bunch of regulators who do issue I mean, there's an incredible variation, you know in British Columbia you can actually get the geo location and Monthly production of every single gas well right across the province You could actually create a mobile app Which you could access in your car and drive past and understand that that well produced You know 300,000 cubic meters of gas last year at one end of the spectrum and meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum You know Russia OPEC China and unfortunately of course those are all areas of massive fossil fuel production So we've got models feeding in we've got structured data from where we can get it We've got also to cover all of the information dark area Which is you know three-quarters of global fossil fuels or more our partners at global energy monitor painstakingly Kind of human research if I can put it like that First of all the coal mine tracker the informational coal is actually better than the information on oil and gas Which was a real revelation to me. Thanks to gems material so it's all in there and then crunched down and normalized and Does as much grizzly detail as you have the appetite for in the documentation? Every single source has a raw data file a processed data file and a description of how we went from one to the other Because the goal of the registry is to be able to offer end numbers, which are not fossil fuel production Because in fact a fossil fuel production is is the proxy emissions is the goal See oh so co2e Everything is standardized as much as possible and there's a delicate balancing act there between you know When you normalize when you don't what health warnings you put on the data You know you've got a lot of big fields that might have data That's two years old or three years old, but then it's flagged that this is a night 2019 data point or whatever But all of that so that we can produce as many instances as possible of a co2e number Associated with an individual field or or coal mine. So that's the front interface you can go in There's summary at country level possibly Yes, a couple of things just worth noting here You can flip between methane Quotients that may be slightly nerdy, but it has a massive massive impact on the overall estimate of of co2e one of the big revelations for me in this is that If you fact does I don't know how widespread this knowledge of the methane factoring issue is but there's at least two different factors depending on what? period of time you considered the methane to be Working under and all reporting has hit or to been on the lower basis so called GWP hundred Attention is now turning to the higher basis. So all of this sounds very dry and arcane the difference is five gigatons a year You know you you can you can think that fossil fuels are emitting 40 gigatons 40 billion tons of co2e a year Well, yes, if you use the GWP hundred factor actually, it's 45 billion tons a year if you use a different factor That's not even new data. That's just an interpretation question. So where there's more than one source you can access the source and see that and variations Because the underlying data sources most of them actually come with a confidence range So you've got midpoints but variations for many purposes you want a midpoint But for others you want to actually expose the uncertainty and everything is is downloadable, right? So I'm Then carrying forward with a series of projections and this is where we would regard the registry is having a kind of Editing function. So who has a scenario that's worth replicating out? What Quality do we assign to it? These lines these lines here Take you forward into the future from historic data and these shapes here underneath our reserves And what you can see here, which happens in many cases one of the reasons I think that reserves are Rated as a metric to judge what's going on is that there's already a production path here Which has come from a national regulator which goes way beyond the current stated reserves the current stated reserves run out here But this is the production pattern from the regulator going through to 2040, right? So there's a dynamic replacement in and around reserves, which everyone is assuming will go on the same At an individual field level. These then are giving you CO2 e estimates Supply chain combustion total with margins of error for a single coal mine again. You can flip the methane Quotient and it starts to get powerful when you are at the field level. These are the top 10 fields of Norway Expressed again in terms of CO2 e oil and gas combined Oh, sorry And so you can begin to see what's going to happen in the future there And if you're looking to produce suppose from our side We want to say Norway. How do you cut a billion tons? How do you do that? You you actually have to come in to what the historic production is and then project out some future production and then play with those Numbers, but it should be working from from the emission from an emission-centric point of view We should be able to model how Norway two or three different scenarios that Norway cuts a billion tons Direct in CO2 e terms This is I Think the reason we put it in this is not yet in the database, but We're going to do this in the coming weeks the US inflation reduction act has imposed a tax For political purposes they call it a fee, but it's a tax on methane The prospective value of liability there is is about 15 billion dollars There's all kinds of exceptions carved in so it may only end up being five billion dollars But that's five billion dollars that companies are going to be figuring out how to pay in the next few months We have about 30,000 US assets so So we can put the methane liability on 30,000 separate fields in the US within the next few weeks and we have ownership details for about a 5,000 of them Lastly these is the registries designed to work in in Combination with other data sets. These are the ones we've done to date So with EIT I we've taken their tax data and then simply worked the numbers to find Tax take per ton of CO2 e which could be a metric used in a just transition debate For an investment firm we've started to take the methane emissions and Figure out an implied methane emissions rate, which they are then using to engage in their portfolio and At that kind of geeky end of the spectrum. There is actually a model the model with the emissions factors in it Sitting down in a database which allows you as I say to go in and do your own modeling out of Managed decline scenarios directly. So the end purpose is to create a community So I would simply close out by saying We simply see the role of the registry as being a kind of Part of the furniture Essentially bean counting. I mean it's a humble and there's a lot of drudgery in this task as well But it's a humble task of bean counting on the supply side And there are some details there in the way that the emissions factors are put together Which are different for supply side than they would be for demand side and just growing it in Collaboration with you and the extended Community in terms of both data sets are not ongoing interpretation questions. Thank you A really incredible piece of work and I can see many many questions on people's faces So I'm just going to keep moving forward and and to the rest of the presentations and not Take up time In between though I will say that many of you have done incredible research using data on fossil fuel production and pretty much all of the pieces of Research that I've seen over the last five years have had to buy the data from rice dad So as of last week you don't have to buy the data from rice dad Which I think is actually a really critical point We've all spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying the data in order to be able to talk about production So I think it's a real a real service. Okay Peter Peter Newell is a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex and the co-founder and research director of the Rapid Transition Alliance He is also I would say the co-founder with me and others of the fossil fuel non-proliferation Treaty initiative and sits on the global steering committee of the fossil fuel treaty Here are two So I'd like to talk through some possible elements of a treaty and this isn't a paper that I've been working on with Harrow van Asselt But I know has attended this conference many times in the past and is known to many of you here And it's really picking up on some of the conversations. We've had over the last day or so about People accepting the clear and obvious needs to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to do so fairly and increasingly through a Multilateral process but increasingly I think all of us face these questions about what so what would it look like? What would be the actual contents and possible elements of a treaty and so what we're trying to do in this in this paper is is think think through that Question so we think about potential institutional mechanisms principles procedures and other elements partly drawing on parallels and precedents from other treaties and Rebecca will probably talk about that in a moment But trying to you know source ideas from academic and grey literature about some of these key dimensions So let me just briefly run through what some of those dimensions are Firstly we have a we're thinking through what would be the scope which fossil fuels would be included and excluded for us It has to be coal oil and gas I know some people Anthony Burke and co talk about the need for a coal Elimination treaty and they think that should be the primary focus We think we need a discussion that links across all fossil fuels and they all need to be included Given the scale of the problem and of course the uneven endowments that we have across across the world in terms of objectives for us It clearly has to be about doing what Paris doesn't do in other words It has to be aligning fossil fuel production with the temperature goals of the Paris agreement And this would obviously mean limiting further production of fossil fuels that's consistent with those sorts of goals So setting a clear burnable carbon budget with baselines and parameters And these of course would be revised in light of scientific assessments inputs from the global registry perhaps Etc as well as taking on board equity considerations in terms of core principles There are a number that we think would be written into a treaty Obviously we'd have to have an element of historical responsibility for all the reasons that we talked about at this conference And this clearly runs through the notion of common but differentiated responsibility in the Climate regime and the other key component that of course is respective capabilities And that's an important part for us as we heard on the panel earlier on on just transitions Countries are differently placed in terms of their ability to transition away from fossil fuels And that has to be explicitly recognized And supported a second key principle would probably be polluter pays or extract to pays principle Clearly precedence for polluter pays in many bodies of international environmental law That would be an important part of a fossil fuel treaty and thirdly just transition And of course we've got the language of just transition in the preamble of the Paris Agreement and that would be an important principle to To mention and as we saw in the panel again this morning You could take precedence and principles from human rights instruments around procedural or distributional and also of course intergenerational Justice that would that could be written in and then finally in terms of principles that would be important for us to have a non regression clause So that you lock in upwards progression and some of those sorts of clauses feature In human rights instruments, and that's the sort of thing we would want to see to make sure there wouldn't be backtracking of any sort So that's principles in terms of commitments We were imagining a series of sort substantive and procedural commitments Clearly goals and time frames would need to be guided by ongoing expert input and scientific assessment in terms of percentages that need to remain in the ground And criteria for allocating and sequencing commitments would include things like The cost of action being disproportionately borne by those with the greatest ability to pay so basic sort of equity principle The greatest producers should act first. So that's the historical responsibility elements And the cumulative emissions are assessed to account for that historical responsibility But you also might layer upon that a series of financial obligations around phase out of public support Public financial support in the forms of subsidies tax breaks aid Export credit finance all those sorts of things both domestically and internationally again picking up on themes from this morning As well as procedural commitments, which might be around obligations for reporting monitoring compliance, etc So those of you that are familiar with the treaty campaign and some of the ideas behind it will know people often talk about the three the three pillars The first one, of course, is it ending expansion? And there's precedence for control. Rebecca may talk about these in more detail from things like the tobacco control treaty the montreal protocol The otto a treaty on on landmines or of course the nuclear non-proliferation treaty itself So we could have quantifiable targets The percentages of fossil fuels that might need to stay in the ground, etc So ending expansion will be pillar number one pillar number two would be phasing out fossil fuels This will be the managed decline. I know Cara hates that term. I'm going to use it anyway We know which combinations of you know levels of emissions degrees of responsibility capacity to meet These these different goals that would have to be agreed in terms of a broad pillar to phase out And the third part would be the the global trust transition, which would have a series of procedural distributional elements So those are the sort of commitments the three key pillars on implementation Obviously as we've just heard the information we have available is often private is dispersed. It's incomplete It's scattered the registry is a fantastic start and moving this this forward We do need a more complete reporting and review mechanism far more transparency So that you can meaningfully track where where there are gaps in progress and you'd want mechanisms as you have with many treaties whereby civil society and organizations and others could hold governments to account when they fail to deliver on promise commitments And so in terms of compliance and effectiveness There's obviously various measures that could be Imagined it might be around facilitative measures capacity building that type of thing At the harder end of the spectrum, you could imagine exclusions from access to particular markets if you think about the exclusive arrangements under the Montreal protocol things like that might be might be useful Clearly with carbon market adjustment mechanisms in the EU and elsewhere Some countries some regions are thinking about tougher ways of excluding products from markets That would be that's somewhat harder to imagine in the in the first instance But over time there may be growing support for that to ensure that no countries are free riding on their commitments under such a treaty In terms of financial mechanisms one thing Andrew and I proposed in the paper We wrote about this a few years back was a global transition fund To support countries through a just transition process and to diversify their economies That could be funded by carbon taxes or the redirection of The think I think it's still 11 Million us dollars a minute Is it that go on that are spent on around the world on fossil fuel subsidies? There's people in this room that know more about that For me, but we might also think about proposals for climate easements or debt for climate swaps going back to the importance of debt that support spoke to earlier So finally just one other thing because it's obviously crucial given that You know as the poor was saying in her talk the other day We're seeing this driven by a lot of bottom-up momentum, you know cities taking the leads communities Businesses non-governmental organizations So we clearly a bit like under the climate regime You need scope to capture to document to record the many different things that people are doing to try and limit production of fossil fuels That needs to be a key part of the momentum You would want a formal platform and a way of Recognizing those contributions towards this momentum to keep fossil fuels in the ground So overall just to sum up I guess for me the major appeal of a treaty Is that this transition has to happen and it can happen in a really disorderly chaotic Conflict-ridden way, which is the way we seem to be moving at the moment Or it can happen in a way which is subject to international law and govern through Multilateral institutions in which countries that need to undergo a just transition in particular have a fair have more of a say And greater scope for participation and my preference obviously is for the latter And I think the treaty is one important. It's certainly not the only way But it's one important way for moving that forward and I'll stop there Fantastic And he did all that in eight and a half minutes. Let's take a breath That was a lot of information That was exciting Our next speaker is Rebecca Burns Rebecca is the deputy director of the treaty initiative and and also Leads on the initiatives research strategy And was the project director of the global registry of fossil fuels She previously worked with the Grantham research institute on energy and just transition policy as well as the new southwell's government And since 2015 has been advising At least developed country group Within the climate negotiations And is also currently undertaking a phd at australian national university and I can tell you from working with her daily I'm pretty sure she doesn't sleep so Rebecca's going to be talking about the legal pathways to getting a treaty And looking at a number of different of other treaties and and what the potential Pathways to achieving a fossil fuel treaty rebecca over to you Thanks so much support So I think this follows on really well from what peter just outlined I'm going to take a step back and look at how we get to a treaty in the first place Looking at lessons from historic regimes primarily humanitarian treaty instruments And obviously if you were here yesterday, you would have heard support I talk about the amazing momentum that the fossil fuel treaty campaign has generated so far And so the subject of my talk is really how we move from that campaign into a formal multilateral process So i'll be presenting on some of the work By at my colleague So I have to say this is very much the work of a couple of colleagues of ours christy mcleod and kate rafferty Who've done the original analysis and we have a paper by christy mcleod That's just been published on the fossil fuel treaty website if you're interested in learning more Here are some goals of the fossil fuel treaty I won't go into that because I think we probably you've heard a lot about that now But obviously very happy to talk about that during the questions But here are the treaty instruments that we analyzed in our research So if for this particular piece of analysis, we're primarily focused on humanitarian regimes There are four here The two that i'm going to focus on mostly are the landmine ban treaty and the nuclear ban treaty because they're the newest Examples of successful treaty campaigns I've also included the global plastics treaty campaign here because it's an example of how We see the lessons learned from the humanitarian movement also applying quite nicely in the environmental space And so basically what i'm going to cover is a set of what i'm calling six key ingredients for treaty making And I would say that these none of these are particularly surprising in fact They might be quite obvious But I think what's really I guess encouraging or useful is to note that through the the regimes that we've looked at These ingredients really played a role in all of them So it's quite a clear recipe for how you move from building a campaign to getting an actual treaty instrument at the end To start with i'm going to tell you a story about the movement to end to ban nuclear weapons So in 2006 a group of activist doctors based in melbourne, australia Launched a new global campaign calling for a ban on nuclear weapons So previously we had the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but nuclear weapons weren't banned Now they started out quite small they had a single staff person in a small office in carleton in melbourne And a group of NGO partners primarily based in australia And they were coalescing around a quite a simple idea Firstly that nuclear weapons need to be banned But also that there is a power in harnessing Non-nuclear armed states to apply pressure to nuclear armed states to make that happen So over time they started to try and build that their network and within a year They had members from all around the world. They had presented a report on the need for a nuclear ban to the UN Within two years the dalai lama and the UN Secretary-General had declared their support for iCan the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and for a nuclear ban Within three years they had funding from the government of norway to set up an office in oslo and then in janeva And then they basically continued to build this drumbeat So they secured the support of the red cross the world trade union movement the world council of churches Pope francis 800 parliamentarians And they led global coordinated advocacy efforts like global days of action as well on a regular basis And then simultaneous to that there was an ongoing diplomatic process So in 2014 there were two conferences on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons In mexico and austria and at the end of those there was a pledge by 127 countries calling for the elimination and prohibition of nuclear weapons Two years later there was a resolution in the UN general assembly Where countries a majority of countries voted to ban nuclear weapons and within a year less than a year after that There was a treaty that had been negotiated and adopted by countries So I think this example shows really shows the I guess it epitomizes the ingredients that i'm going to work through obviously I will say that as an initiative we're really keen to learn from those that have experience in these spaces as well So you know really keen to learn from others who have experience working within multilateral regimes so we can keep building on this knowledge The first ingredient that we've identified is probably quite obvious, but I think really the foundation which is building a movement So what we've seen is that all of the campaigns that have then led to successful treaties have firstly focused on shifting the narrative So for landmines and nuclear the idea was that they shifted the narrative away from vilifying country governments To stigmatizing the weapons themselves With the idea being that that enabled countries to then actually become legitimate actors in the process and and participate in the treaty making process And they also focused on really engaging and enrolling Groups of champions. So we've got here celebrities scientists You know we had people like the Dalai Lama and the Pope as moral leaders Former heads of state is a real key part and cities and sub-national governments actually is a really integral part of many of these campaigns The second ingredient is building the evidence base. So this has included Establishing formal institutions like the international atomic energy agency Carrying out investigations like investigations by the Red Cross And the human rights watch on the impacts of landmines and also creating mandates within the un process on transparency as well So there was a UN general assembly resolution calling for a report on the problems associated with landmines for example and then building on this Is starting to bring in country governments as champions or first movers So there are several ways this has happened one is regionally with land Landmine free zones and nuclear free zones And one is by getting several country governments to start to pioneer and champion the idea and then Essentially use their diplomatic power to engage other governments. So with the landmines a banned example Canada and austria were really key in hosting conferences and starting to push the concept with with other countries And then building on that Is a series of conferences and convenings so starting to formalize the process a little bit more These often started as NGO led conferences with landmine ban There was a conference of 70 participants in 1993 which grew to 450 participants from both NGOs and governments Two years later, which then led to government starting to take the helm and a formal process of Government-led conferences. There were two in Ottawa in Canada The one which initiated negotiations and one which concluded them and this really happened in quite a short space of time But was sort of an incremental process that became more and more formalized a really key step And this sort of this has to happen relatively early in the process but has to be led by Governments is deciding on the forum where negotiations will take place So interestingly all of the instruments that we looked at there's quite a range of forums The nuclear ban treaty was negotiated within the UN General Assembly because they were able to get a majority vote there The chemical weapons and the original nuclear non-proliferation treaty happened in an autonomous body called what's now called the conference on disarmament It's changed over time But it has a different set of rules and it does report into the UN but also operates outside of it Interestingly the landmine ban treaty wasn't able to get a resolution within the UN General Assembly So instead Canada convened a conference in Ottawa Where it countries just decided to take forward negotiations outside of the formal UN process Which is a completely valid option. And so that treaty was negotiated by a group of countries That was concluded the following year. It now reports to the UN Secretary General But it it created its own standalone process And the plastics treaty which doesn't exist yet It's in the process of negotiations right now is happening through the relatively new UN Environment Assembly which meets every two years And so the choice of forum has a lot of impact in terms of how quick the negotiations can take place and what the rules are And one thing that experts have been advising the fossil fuel treaty initiative is that there are a couple of key things One is the ability of civil society to participate and with the landmine ban standalone process That was really a key part of that being successful was that civil society was very actively engaged and the other is that Ideally finding a process that is not consensus-based So the UN FCCC is a consensus-based decision-making body Which means there's a lowest common denominator approach and it's quite hard to have binding ambitious commitments Whereas say the UN General Assembly is majority-based decision-making and it does enable some countries like with a nuclear ban The non nuclear armed states were able to push through a treaty Despite the fact that nuclear armed states weren't initially and aren't yet involved And the very final point is probably also very obvious But very important is how you define the substance of the treaty and Peter has obviously talked about a lot of what that substance could be One thing that we've also been advised by experts is that it's really important for civil society not to draft a treaty The treaty needs to be generated by governments to enable buy-in to the process But civil society has a really important role to play in crafting the principles that underpin the treaty So we've seen some academic work start to develop I know this is too small to read But I think it's a really good example if you look on the website of either the Center for International Environmental Law Or the Environmental Investigation Agency This is the table they put together of the core elements and principles that should underpin the plastics treaty And it's been a really core useful very simple tool that's then fed into what the resolution Um that eventually was successful in the UN Environment Assembly looked like to start the negotiations of the treaty So they set a baseline for what the treaty should look like without Without necessarily doing the job of countries who need to be involved in that process running out of time Okay, I will just very quickly conclude by saying I won't go through the lessons learned What I'll just say is two two very quick challenges that I think have come through the process and that are often raised one is that Treaty taking making does take time and that's a valid a valid criticism. One thing I'll say is that I just to say what's on this slide is that from the point of a first country expressing support to the conclusion of a treaty Um in the land mine ban treaty and nuclear that took three years So while the campaign process might take some time once the country engages it can actually happen quite quickly Obviously fossil fuels are a bit of a different beast But there is some optimism there to note that this this can happen relatively quickly And finally, um, there's a criticism that well if we're not going to get producer states involved Is there a point in having a treaty and we've seen that with the nuclear ban? This is a long paragraph here, but basically the crux of it is just there's a huge normative power in treaty making and even if Say fossil fuel producers aren't involved Similar with the nuclear ban where the nuclear arms states aren't involved There's a huge normative and narrative element which enables the countries that Have crafted this ambitious in the case of nuclear and ambitious ban treaty to put diplomatic pressure On to nuclear arms states and I think a similar Um approach can apply in the case of fossil fuels as well So i'll conclude there. Thank you very much Thank you, rebecca our final speaker today is dr. Catherine Harrison She's a professor of political science at the university of british columbia She received her bachelors and master's degrees in chemical engineering before completing her phd in political science Before entering academia Catherine worked as a policy analyst for both environment canada and the united states congress She's going to speak be speaking to us about the political economy of fossil fuel supply Thank you. Can you folks hear me okay with my mask still on? All right. I'm going to keep it then. Um I am presenting work that is co-authored with amy janswood my colleague at ubc now soon to be at mcgill And amy has very much taken the lead in this project and i'm going to do my best to channel her in this presentation The problem that's going to be Very obvious to everyone in this room. We need to make dramatic reductions in our production of all fossil fuels year after year And we also need to leave most of the known reserves in the ground But also as we know the focus has been on consumption of fossil fuels rather than production And as we've already seen much less attention to the production side in un documents So our research question is what are the patterns in who is talking About fossil fuel production in the ndc's and we're very much building on Or trying to build on extend the fantastic work that's been done by george epigott All the folks at sei and including natalie who's already presented on their most recent reports One of the questions that We get asked is well, they're not required to talk about production in their ndc So why would any country do it and we identify three different broad hypotheses or groups of hypotheses in the literature the first is One reason to do it is for fairness or equity reasons And although, you know, some of us who study international politics might say well Yeah, sure This is what they've signed on to CBD r is fundamental to the un f triple c in the paris agreement. So in theory these countries have committed to that And here we would expect that the wealthier countries would be the ones that would disproportionately be showing leadership in planning to reduce or planning for decline of fossil fuel production a second set of hypotheses follows from the economic modeling that has been done Anticipating where would production come from under different climate action and economic scenarios? And there we identify two main hypotheses The idea being that countries that are either Producing costly to produce have high costs of production Or have carbon intensive production Are especially vulnerable when global demand for fossil fuels decline The price of fossil fuels go down and that will disproportionately price the high carbon producers Or carbon intensive producers whose costs will go up out of the market So these are the ones that should be anticipating problems and we might expect to be disproportionately Taking action or at least talking about it That said there's a counter argument that at least in the short term Anticipating decline in Long-term decline in markets might prompt quite the opposite That these countries might try to get as much of their high cost and dirty oil to market as fast as they can While they still can so the the green paradox And finally we look at comparative political economy literature Um looking at the domestic politics within different countries, and I'm not going to talk about all of it in the short time, but The key comparison we make there is between net exporters and net importers The idea being that if a country is producing primarily for its own consumption Then they at least in transitioning to clean energy Can offset The loss of jobs in production with domestic jobs On the other hand countries that are next net exporters that are producing on a much larger scale Are both more financially dependent the governments tend to be more financially dependent on the revenues But also transitioning domestic demand From fossil fuels to clean energy is not going to create anywhere near as many jobs as might be lost In phasing down very large scale production So what we do is we only look at NDCs of fossil fuel producing countries identified from the BP database We're now up to about 65 because we've coded the French and Spanish ones as well as the English ones The um We've coded the NDCs. I think I might have missed a slide. Did I? Yeah, I did We've coded them for a number of different things related to production any explicit reference to production Increase maintaining winding down of any fossil fuel Any equity arguments they make either to reduce or not to reduce their production We looked at what they're saying about extraction related emissions and finally What discussion they have about economic transition just transition diversification of their economies And then we combined that coding from NDCs with additional data sources as a proxy for income We look at the human development index from the un In the case of cost of production and carbon intensity of production we could only find um National level data on oil So we only look at oil there where the cost of production per barrel And carbon intensity per barrel is drawn from masnadi at all 2021 updating an earlier Publication and then imports exports domestic consumption we get from IEA data What um, do we find first all? Very limited evidence that higher income producers are more willing than lower income producers to anticipate Decline or limit their production only one higher income producer oman talks about shift reducing its gdp um reliance on Fossil fuels and in that case a bit of digging suggests that they anticipate a decline in their Resource rather than an intentional one what we do see is that higher income countries Were less likely to plan for increasing their production So a quarter of them talk about increasing production versus half of the lower income one So that's kind of consistent, but wow, it's such a drop in the bucket compared to where we need to be Loss of talk about fairness, but the fairness arguments that are made are a rationale not to reduce production because of economic dependence on fossil fuel production rather than um a rationale that As the countries that are contributing to this problem and have profited from it. There is a special responsibility Economic incentives we find little evidence that higher cost producers are more likely To be planning for decline than lower cost producers again Only one of the high cost producers oman is talking about shifting its economic reliance away from oil um Rather we see consistent with the green paradox paradox that both low and high cost producers Are um planning on production increases in large numbers Carbon intensity of production Again limited evidence many carbon intensive producers Are talking about um expanding their production some examples there or continuing um what we do see is as with income the income comparison a Less likelihood that carbon intensive producers are planning to increase their production And i'm wondering there rather than a government effect. We are seeing An investment effect where The private Private markets may not be investing in some of these capital intensive long-term projects And we're seeing a differentiation between the capitalized versus new production there Rather than planning for decline carbon intensive producers tend to be planning to reduce the emissions intensity Of their production now that's consistent with the demand side only approach, but especially in the case of exporters what they're doing is is um Protecting the competitiveness of their oil exports A number of strategies domestic reductions through carbon tax reducing flaring carbon capture but also Lowering the mitigation costs by creating flexibility through domestic offsets and reliance on voluntary international mechanisms And increasingly relying on Governments this is not so much discussed in the ndc. Although canada was candid that they are subsidizing The um emissions reductions because canada considers that an efficient fossil fuel subsidy And thus trying to keep very carbon intensive oil competitive as long as possible We see somewhat more support for the domestic political economy hypothesis that net exporters are Less likely than the net importers to be anticipating and planning for decline Only oman in the case of oil again canada talks about phasing out coal Ex coal production That is both very selective um across fossil fuels and within coal because canada mostly exports um metallurgical coal and is is talking about phasing out The um thermal coal and also because coal isn't nearly as important as oil and gas Um for canada's economy in contrast. We do see several net importers especially in the case of coal Talking about production decline mostly in conjunction with phasing out coal fired electricity So to summarize very limited evidence of voluntary Planning for reductions consistent with the cbdr principle Higher cost and carbon intensity oil producers aren't there's no evidence that they are planning for decline quite the opposite Many of them are trying to get as much oil to market as they can somewhat stronger support for The domestic political economy But very selective more attention to coal lots of enthusiasm for getting as much gas on the market as possible as a transition fuel Lots of fossil fuel producers Particularly the wealthier countries Are talking the talk there's more frequent references to Economic diversification and just transition, but they're not yet walking the walk In fact, overall we see a remarkable level of denial Even among the countries that either have the greatest historical responsibility Or are most economically vulnerable that action on climate change Is threatening their production and their economies Which is all the more reason that we need collaboration on both reporting and gradually wind down through Boga and the fossil fuel non proliferation treaty. Thank you Thank you so much Catherine it is So in in in in some total I would say the conversation on international cooperation to constrained supply In in in a way that aligns with Paris goals is both Incredibly sobering and incredibly exciting Lots that's the thing with these countries basically doing nothing yet to constrain production is that There are so many ways that and new ideas of where we could possibly go The floor is open now to all of you to ask questions to any of our panelists I'm going to take these first three And then Now we'll see how much time we have Thank you. Um, so my question is for Johnny and um, so I guess I'm trying to understand a bit better what the fossil fuel registry can do compared to Let's say like the Reichstad data. So I mean, I've been using the the gem data for Gas power generation because that's not necessarily available in in Reichstad or at least not in the u-cube And then there's an emissions queue. So I've been painstakingly sort of converting volumes in terms of A giga ton emissions. So, I mean, I'm I'm I want to use your your public registry and I think like wish The academia should rally on uh on a public registry and that would be great if The the the data would be available for all um, but I'm wondering like uh, first of all if There's kind of a webinar that explains the uh, the functionality like in detail And what would we be sort of losing compared to the Reichstad data in terms of user functionality in terms of making graphs and so we have a Reichstad subscription for example, and then I'm wondering um, what would be sort of the transition costs in terms of changing and um and yeah, basically I think we'll just um take that one. It's very specific, uh, Johnny. So why don't you answer that and then we'll go to the next two? Yes, um, thanks for the question. Um Well, you mentioned access to fact that this is open that's obviously very key in terms of All categories of users. I mean, I don't know your particular situation, but we've been talking yesterday about building coalitions and building power and civil society So there are many situations in which that's the difference between, you know, something happening and nothing happening if that information going into a process or not. Um, but beyond that question of of, um access, um I have used Reichstad quite extensively in the past and actually I still kind of dip in on their webinars from time to time Um, I don't know if you've noticed but Reichstad is put together by extremely smart people Um, and presents you with very shiny sheets of numbers You have zero provenance on any of those numbers Right when you have a field in Siberia Um, it gives you a series of numbers which tells you that that's the historic production and then a series of future projections In some cases and I actually noticed because there have been cases where I've phoned them up and the same with with Mackenzie um I phoned them up and said, okay, what's the basis for the future thing and could it be like this or could it be like that and The next time you look at it the numbers have changed and it looks like they've changed the result of your conversation So I don't I don't mean to um Do down those services. They're very very good and they're you know, very smart people working very conscientiously But there's no provenance. Sometimes that number is a genuine piece of data direct from a trusted party sometimes It's like pretty much everyone who does modeling does is interpolation You know, there's a 20 25 number in a 20 30 number and they interpolate But you will never know right because because you you take it and So far it's shown that it's good enough for those Purposes but if you take that then beyond this current question And I should also say of course that the registry when you say well, what can you do in terms of fancy? direct um creation of graphs and so on the Data is downloadable. So the question of making a graph out of it is You know not instant, but you know one or two minutes However, the data is very very gappy as I mentioned So there will be large areas where rice that has numbers in the registry currently Doesn't have any numbers. So then you know carry on with your subscription But in the end sorry, it's too long In the end we cannot expect um the kinds of treaties between sovereign states to happen without a trusted basis of information and um I'm gonna guess that there's never been the president, you know the nuclear non-proliferation treaty didn't Didn't you know, it wasn't that all signatory states happened to have a subscription to some commercial Information service so it goes beyond the question of immediate utility in the end We will we will will need that as a trusted basis and Those rice that numbers on emissions and woodmark numbers on emissions are mysteriously lower than ie a numbers or rmi numbers which are public agencies and we can discuss how much of a coincidence that is So there's also the question of incumbency and self-interest Thanks, johnny So there um there are going to be I know um some webinars on how to use the registry and understanding the registry etc and so If you don't see johnny or rebecca afterwards to make sure you get on those lists if you're interested in doing those more detailed webinars I had two questions here one Was up there and one that was right there Uh, thank you she now say am I from natural resources institutes and by one studies japan So I have a question to lebecca. I want to ask about the legal nature of non-profession Preparation treaties So i'm not a legal expert. So I collect me if i'm wrong But it is often said like you know success about policy agreements is based on uh on a weak agreement It's not like strictly speaking like you know legally Like a treaty it requires like in the parliamentary approval But this is important particularly important for the us because us never Signed a treaty to need to require the senator approval And so it was only like you know signed by the president. That's why the us joined the police agreement And so i'm just wondering about so to be successful The treaty is to be successful Do we need to like you know the treaty needs also Striving for the more weak agreements sort of like you know similar to the party agreement or Or we shouldn't require to be more stronger commitment and to legally Binding sort of like requiring like the Parliamentary approval or what what's your take on that? Thank you I'm going to also take the question that was right down here Because we're budding up against lunch. So let's get those last two out and then sorry we're running out of time Thanks, and I think this will be a good segue. I'm kathy mulvm with the union of concerned scientists But in my previous role with with corporate accountability. I was very involved in civil society mobilization around the who framework convention on tobacco control So I guess this is mainly for peter and rebecca But one of the provisions of that treaty obligates parties to protect their public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry And so I guess i'm wondering you know It seems really important to to be thinking about that both in terms of substance, but also the process itself and Wondering your thoughts on that Thank you Peter rebecca rebecca do you want to start with the registry question? Yeah, sure Thanks. Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's a it's a really fair pointer. Um, it's really a trade-off. So I think there are Two options at the extremes one is a treaty that has less binding commitments You know like the paris agreement ultimately is not binding countries are able to submit their own NDCs as we've heard And therefore it's more universal Almost all countries are signatories to the paris agreement. The other extreme is a country that has ambitious binding commitments, but fewer countries will be members With the fossil fuel treaty because it's really designed as a complement to paris So we see paris as being the baseline. It sets the 1.5 degree temperature goal countries are submitting NDCs We don't really want to replicate another paris So the idea is to go towards the other end of the the spectrum and have stronger binding commitments We don't expect that say my country australia or the us or russia will become members of this treaty at least initially and We that's in some ways by design Because if they were it would mean that the commitments were likely not strong enough and not in line with 1.5 degrees And not in line with the just transition So the idea is really to create a set of binding ambitious commitments That create a normative Shift and create a baseline that then countries that are members of the treaty can create diplomatic pressure But it also creates a tool for advocates within Major producer countries to then start to hold them to account It's not a silver bullet But it's a it's a tool as part of the broader kind of regime of of things, you know Alongside the beyond oil and gas alliance alongside NDCs and the paris agreement that we've heard about today Maybe I'll thank David Peter on the sure just quickly on the tobacco Example and precedent. I mean, I think what it points to is that there's all clear conflicts of interest, right? And that is a huge challenge and it operates at every level We see it internationally in terms of who sits on the delegation and as we saw at Glasgow You know fossil fuel companies were a delegation to be the largest one there and you know at national level It's around revolving doors party donations who sits on the committees I mean there's huge work to do in terms of undoing incumbency Like rolling back It's it's hard to sort of say definitively who has a legitimate Right to be in the room to discuss these things of course companies on one level have have some sort of right to be there I guess sometimes I think like with you know, like a Saudi delegation or others when it's mainly made up of members of Saudi Aramco There's questions about are you at all interested in the overall objective of this purpose? And and maybe there are and I know salim haq and others have talked about this We do need stronger conflicts of interest policy at the international level But certainly I think the battle for activists at national level is further expose a work about About what's going on and I say that someone in the uk who has a new prime minister rolling back on fracking who used to work for Shell for example Thank you peter um, and I want to thank you all for your tremendous, uh research um It's said when we look at treaties and new issues like this That are intransigent problems that haven't been addressed in existing structures And that required a national cooperation that the journey really matters And and I was struck here listening to all of you, you know being in this room and having this conversation now for a number of years Six years or something Again, how far we've come because and how critical it is your research in aline catherine that we are showing The world that no, we're not doing it yet through the paris agreement um, that's really important because in fact When we first started proposing the treaty that was the response that we got wasn't it in the uk parliament and boris It said but the paris agreement does that constraints production and says who gets to produce what and we're like no No, it doesn't actually and but The number of countries that we've met with that actually have no idea that there isn't rules on who gets to produce What is totally fascinating? And this research is pretty critical to really show that the data and transparency so countries can see for themselves I sat with a vulnerable nation in New york last week and played with the registry database And that was the point where they got excited about the treaty actually because they they were like norway's gonna What can it is doing? This is not okay And and to be how give that to countries so they can see for themselves And then you know trying to look at and develop what are the ways that we're going to coordinate that we're going to govern this new space What are some of the ideas and and creative ways that we can ensure that fairness and equity are at the basis Of all of these new conversations on how to constrain supply. I think tremendous research that you've all been doing I'm sorry. We didn't have more time for questions. I promised we'd finish in time for you all to get to lunch Thank you for joining us