Latest news with #UNFCCC
Scoop
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Scoop
UNFCCC Parties Must Help Protect Civic Space In Climate Talks, Says Civil Society
Bonn, 24 June 2025 - Civil society constituencies participating in the UNFCCC climate negotiations have today shared an open letter with all Parties to the Convention, raising urgent concerns over the UNFCCC Secretariat's arbitrary and escalating censorship of peaceful expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The letter - signed by the Women and Gender Constituency, YOUNGO, and Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations - the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) and Climate Action Network (CAN), calls attention to the Secretariat's recent decision to prohibit the use of the phrase 'End the Siege' during a planned action at SB62 in Bonn, despite allowing language such as 'end the genocide.' The UNFCCC Secretariat cited the need to 'maintain a neutral and constructive environment,' but civil society actors reject the idea that silence in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe constitutes neutrality. Tasneem Essop, Executive Director, Climate Action Network International, said: 'Let's be clear: the UNFCCC Secretariat is not neutral - it's policing civil society while the rest of the UN system, including the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, openly call for an end to the siege of Gaza. When our banners are censored for using the same language as UN leaders, it's not about rules - it's about politics. The UNFCCC is embarrassingly out of step with the rest of the UN and with fundamental human rights. We refuse to be complicit in this erasure of the truth.' The letter states,'Silence is not neutrality. To censor calls to 'End the Siege' is to condone it. The climate crisis cannot be addressed in isolation from broader struggles for justice and human rights.' Read the letter: To: All Parties to the UNFCCC Cc: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat Bonn, 20th June 2025 Subject: Civil Society Protest Against UNFCCC's Arbitrary Censorship of Solidarity with Palestine Your Excellencies, We write to you today with grave concern and indignation. As civil society, we have been a part of the UNFCCC for close to three decades. Our engagement has included advocating for and bringing voices of peoples and communities on the frontlines through actions and press conferences inside the UNFCCC amongst others. For the last two years in the UNFCCC sessions, COP's and SB's, we have faced an escalating pattern of arbitrary censorship from the UNFCCC Secretariat - specifically targeting expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian peoples. Despite our repeated efforts to navigate and comply with an increasingly ambiguous and inconsistent set of restrictions, the Secretariat has continued to impose arbitrary limits on our collective rights. Legitimate, peaceful expressions of solidarity - statements, words, signs, and slogans that align with international human rights and international humanitarian law - have been censored or blocked. This situation has reached a new and deeply troubling low. The UNFCCC Secretariat, in a response to an application for a Palestine solidarity action in the venue of SB62, communicated that they could not authorise the use of the phrase 'End the Siege' in the banners and any accompanying text. As they did not object to the other phrases we use, including 'end the genocide', their focus on the siege wording is unusual and perplexing. This further demonstrates the arbitrariness of their decision-making. The reason provided by the UNFCCC Secretariat was their need to 'maintain a neutral and constructive environment that supports open dialogue among Parties', and authorisation must be assessed in light of the current context. We struggle to understand how a clamp down on the calling out of an ongoing and well-documented humanitarian catastrophe can be considered neutral, particularly when the UN Secretary General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and representatives of other UN bodies have called for the same thing using the same language. In addition, a majority of states who are also Parties to the UNFCCC process have voted for a resolution in the UN General Assembly demanding an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the blockade in Gaza. To silence the call to 'End the Siege' is to condone it. This is no longer a question of procedure or neutrality. It is picking a side, and in this case, a side that does not align with the UN's own values and international humanitarian law. Civil society has decided to end our negotiations on Palestinian Solidarity actions with the Secretariat that compromises our rights to civic space and freedom of expression within this space. We refuse to accept a decision that directly contradicts the rights and freedoms that the UN was founded to protect. We have therefore decided to make our grievances public in the hope that all people of conscience will support basic human rights and bring it to the attention of Parties because the UNFCCC Secretariat's attempts at silencing us is done in the name of Parties. . The climate crisis is inseparable from questions of justice and human rights. The Paris Agreement itself is emphatic that 'Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights [...]' The Secretariat's refusal to acknowledge an unfolding crime against humanity, together with its active suppression of calls to end the genocide and siege, and doing so in the name of Parties in the UNFCCC, has deeply shaken our confidence in this body's ability to safeguard humanity's future. This is a sentiment that echoes far beyond these walls, and risks making multilateralism irrelevant to humanity. The UNFCCC Secretariat's narrow understanding of climate, ignoring its intersections with civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, not only is contrary to the Convention and the Paris Agreement but will lead to a failure in finding systematic and sustained solutions to the climate crisis. We appeal to Parties to reaffirm the rights of civil society, particularly our freedom of expression in calling out a genocide and the vested interests that uphold this as well as the climate crisis. Silence is not neutrality. Sincerely,
Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Business
- Express Tribune
Countries agree on 10% UN climate budget rise
Simon Stiell, Secretary of UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), speaks during an event with the newly announced COP30 President Ambassador Andre Correa do Lago, in Brasilia, Brazil February 6, 2025. Photo REUTERS Countries agreed on Thursday to increase the UN climate body's budget by 10% for the next two years, a move the body welcomed as a commitment by governments to work together to address on climate change, with China's contribution rising. The deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries - from Japan to Saudi Arabia, to small island nations like Fiji - at UN climate negotiations in Bonn, comes despite major funding cuts at other UN agencies, triggered in part by the US slashing its contributions, and political pushback on ambitious climate policies in European countries. Countries agreed to a core budget of 81.5 million euros for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) over 2026-2027, up 10% from 2024-2025. The core budget is funded by government contributions. The deal includes an increase in China's contribution, reflecting the country's economic growth. China, the world's second-biggest economy, would cover 20% of the new budget, up from 15% previously.
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 days ago
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Countries Agree 10% Increase for UN Climate Budget
Countries agreed on Thursday to increase the UN climate body's budget by 10% for the next two years, a move the body welcomed as a commitment by governments to work together to address on climate change, with China's contribution rising. The deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries - from Japan to Saudi Arabia, to small island nations like Fiji - at UN climate negotiations in Bonn, comes despite major funding cuts at other UN agencies, triggered in part by the US slashing its contributions, and political pushback on ambitious climate policies in European countries. Countries agreed to a core budget of 81.5 million euros for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) over 2026-2027, up 10% from 2024-2025. The core budget is funded by government contributions. The deal includes an increase in China's contribution, reflecting the country's economic growth. China, the world's second-biggest economy, would cover 20% of the new budget, up from 15% previously. Only the United States, the world's biggest economy, was allocated a bigger share, of 22%. However, President Donald Trump quit the UN Paris climate agreement and halted international climate funding. Bloomberg Philanthropies has pledged to cover the US contribution to the UNFCCC budget. The US did not attend the UN climate talks this week in Bonn, Germany where the budget was approved. UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the increase as "a clear signal that governments continue to see UN-convened climate cooperation as essential, even in difficult times." The UNFCCC runs annual climate negotiations among countries and helps implement deals that are made, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits nearly all nations to limit global warming. The body has faced a severe budget shortfall in recent years, as major donors including China and the US had not paid on time, prompting the body to cut costs including by cancelling some events. The UNFCC's running costs and headcount - its core budget funded 181 staff in 2025 - are smaller than some other UN bodies facing sharp funding cuts, such as the UN trade and development agency's roughly 400 staff. Meanwhile, the UN Secretariat, the global body's executive arm, is preparing to slash its $3.7 billion budget by 20%, according to an internal memo.
Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Saoi O'Connor: As the UN talks shop, no food or water enters Gaza
There is a wire mesh fence between me and the fire exit, another between me and the Rhine. The World Conference Center used by the UN for the intersessional climate negotiations each June is superior to the majority of venues in which the Conference of the Parties (or COP) has been hosted, for this reason; where I write from, you can see the river. It's often been speculated that the outcomes of climate negotiations would be better if said negotiations took place in rooms with windows, instead of dark little prefabricated boxes that might just as well be shipping containers for the amount of light that gets in. I am not sure that the outcomes of the intersessional meetings validate this theory - I suspect closing plenary outputs will be just as dismal as those of COPs gone by - but at least here, in this venue, one is less disconnected from the world outside. The lawn that I write from is a little sterile, one can be certain here that, unlike other parts of the city, no dog has marked its territory on the grass, and though the stench of cigarette smoke is as dense as anywhere else, this lawn lacks the distinctive scent of German beer. In this place the full spectrum of attendees, from negotiators in their pressed suits and lapel pins to radical youth activists, those who have fled death to their would-be murderers, sit alike in the grass, and the shade of the trees holds the weight of history. The outcome of every COP is shaped here. Every November, all of us pack up and head out to the Conference of the Parties to negotiate on humanity's collective future, and every June, like a salmon returning to the river that spawned it, we return to the Rhine. In 20, 30 years maybe there will be some kind of memorial here, maybe we will say, this was a place where we all came together, a kind of no man's land, where the elders of our climate justice movements held council with their cigarettes and the party delegates argued in urgent, hushed tones over overpriced filter coffee. I imagine the future will refer to this lawn in the same way that historians refer to the Christmas Truce of 1914, this is a place where we were all human together, and it changed nothing. Gaza and the climate The topic of rivers has been a source of contention in these conferences for some time now. Since the Dubai COP in 2023, civil society groups have been banned from using the phrase 'from the river to the sea' during protests inside the conference. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the only UN agency which allows protest inside the venue during the negotiations, a fact which the agency's secretariat is extremely proud of. However, in recent years censorship of civil society during these protests has made organising and partaking in these actions feel relatively pointless. This June at Subsidiary Bodies (SB62), the secretariat informed us that we would also not be allowed to use the phrase 'end the siege' during these actions, an action which has been echoed by human rights organizations and other UN agencies alike, the absolute bare minimum demand of humanity. As we sit here in our talking shop, no food or water enters Gaza. Israel kidnaps humanitarians from aid ships and Egypt stops activist convoys on its borders. Their contraband consists of food and water, medicine, crutches, a prosthetic arm for a child. The fist of empire closes around itself and the light of conscience grows dim. Millions of Gazans continue to starve, and within the halls of the United Nations we are not allowed to condemn this. Maybe for those who have not walked these halls this comes as a surprise, though the last several years of ongoing genocide with little intervention from the multilateral system will have relieved many people of notions they may previously have had about the supreme benevolence of the United Nations. This same distance, this discussion and negotiation and condemnation in the abstract, where human rights and justice exist only in the realms of lapel pins and SDG-themed (Sustainable Development Goals) merchandising, is another common thread which binds the Palestinian struggle and the struggle for climate justice together. What has changed? To return to my original hypothetical - I don't know that the outcomes of this conference would be improved if they were held in a nature reserve or a forest or on the coast of my home in West Cork, but I know that they are defined by what we see out the window. If it was not the Rhine on the other side of this fence, but the Jordan, if we stood in Congo where children are forced to mine lithium for our promised 'just transition' (a phrase which has its roots in the climate justice movement, but has been largely misappropriated in this space), or in the pacific islands, where already the ocean begins to creep up to people's doors, if we stood in the midst of fire or flood or airstrike, I know that this conversation would be different. Many of my peers here will return home to these places, many of them on flight paths that have been disrupted due to US and Israeli aggression. It is currently precarious to transit through Qatar, and they - like me - will try to explain what they have seen. To explain what it is to press your face up to the glass and see the individuals responsible for our global suffering — for the radical, irreversible damage to life on this planet which will define humanity's future until we as a species cease to walk upon the Earth — to feel the weight of history and the grief of knowing you can do nothing, nothing, about it. Saoi O'Connor: 'This place where I sit now is not in Germany, it is not in Europe, it is not even truly on Earth, I write to you now from another place.' Photo: Pamela EA This place where I sit now is not in Germany, it is not in Europe, it is not even truly on Earth, I write to you now from another place. Abstracted, isolated from context, this wire mesh fence between us and the world, it protects us from realities that might interfere with our nitpicking over documents that nobody anywhere else in the world will ever read. I have been attending these climate negotiations since I was 17 years old. I'm now 22, and as myself and many others have been remarking this week, the biggest change that we have seen in that time is that the coffee machine in this building now offers oat milk. We do not gather here because we believe that the United Nations or the neoliberal world order can save us, or has any intention of saving us. We do this because it is a gathering place in which we exchange notes about how we are saving ourselves. Beneath my feet in this lawn the seeds of a new world are already planted. As the eyes of the world turn to COP30 this November, a conference which will undoubtedly be the most critical climate negotiation since Paris, remember that we were already here, that we have been here before. Cork students taking part in the Fridays for Future strikes in front of City Hall. When history comes to take down this fence and walk upon the lawn of the United Nations, we will not forgive, and we will not forget. Picture: Saoi O'Connor That the preparatory session for COP30 was defined by the twin injustices of the banning of a phrase which called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, and the EU blocking the discussion of finance for the Global South, for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. We are six months into 2025 and so far the theme from the UN is that whether you deserve to live, to eat, to drink clean water, depends on where you were born. When history comes to take down this fence and walk upon the lawn of the United Nations, we will not forgive, and we will not forget. Saoi O'Connor is a climate campaigner who has been attending the climate negotiations since they were 17 years old. They continue to be active on climate all over Europe; travelling most recently to Sapmi to protest logging with the Sami people
GMA Network
2 days ago
- Business
- GMA Network
Countries agree 10% increase for UN climate budget
BONN, Germany - Countries agreed on Thursday to increase the U.N. climate body's budget by 10% for the next two years, a move the body welcomed as a commitment by governments to work together to address on climate change, with China's contribution rising. The deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries - from Japan to Saudi Arabia, to small island nations like Fiji - at U.N. climate negotiations in Bonn, comes despite major funding cuts at other U.N. agencies, triggered in part by the U.S. slashing its contributions, and political pushback on ambitious climate policies in European countries. Countries agreed to a core budget of 81.5 million euros for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) over 2026-2027, up 10% from 2024-2025. The core budget is funded by government contributions. The deal includes an increase in China's contribution, reflecting the country's economic growth. China, the world's second-biggest economy, would cover 20% of the new budget, up from 15% previously. Only the United States, the world's biggest economy, was allocated a bigger share, of 22%. However, President Donald Trump quit the U.N. Paris climate agreement and halted international climate funding. Bloomberg Philanthropies has pledged to cover the U.S. contribution to the UNFCCC budget. The U.S. did not attend the U.N. climate talks this week in Bonn, Germany where the budget was approved. UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the increase as "a clear signal that governments continue to see U.N.-convened climate cooperation as essential, even in difficult times." The UNFCCC runs annual climate negotiations among countries and helps implement deals that are made - including the 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits nearly all nations to limit global warming. The body has faced a severe budget shortfall in recent years, as major donors including China and the U.S. had not paid on time, prompting the body to cut costs including by cancelling some events. The UNFCC's running costs and headcount - its core budget funded 181 staff in 2025 - are smaller than some other U.N. bodies facing sharp funding cuts, such as the U.N. trade and development agency's roughly 400 staff. Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretariat, the global body's executive arm, is preparing to slash its $3.7 billion budget by 20%, according to an internal memo. — Reuters
