Mr. Jerry Mac Evilly:

My name is Jerry Mac Evilly. I am the climate policy officer working with Trócaire and I have been following the climate negotiations. I thank the Chairman. Our executive director, Eamonn Meehan, sends his apologies. He is out of the country at the moment but he thanks the committee for its invitation. Mr. Clarken has set out the ongoing impacts on climate change and the issue of climate justice. I will now very quickly go through what is going on in the negotiations, the EU and Ireland's role, and our final recommendations. I will try to get through this quickly.

I will address some of the jargon first. Some members of the committee may be aware of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which was signed in 1992 with a focus on driving down emissions. It focuses on three main areas: adaptation, in other words, protecting the poorest from the worst impacts of climate change; mitigation by preventing further climate change by reducing emissions across all sectors; and the overarching objective of climate finance, which I will speak about in more detail later.

I will give some background on what has been happening in recent years in the run-up to Paris. Some members might be familiar with the Kyoto Protocol which was the first international agreement on mandatory emissions reductions.

This commitment has been renewed and runs until 2020. Negotiations have been taking place in recent years with the aim of putting in place a new post-2020 agreement. This has been a very difficult process and negotiations have not succeeded thus far. One reason has been that parties have attempted to negotiate on what is known as a top-down agreement, in other words, specific overall emissions reduction objectives which all parties would have to meet in the relative near term. What is different about Paris is that it is based on a bottom-up rather than top-down approach. Parties have put forward voluntary and non-binding national pledges. In the context of the European Union, this has been done as part of a bloc. These pledges would then sit as part of the agreement but not within the core legal agreement. The upshot of this is that there is a high degree of positivity that agreement will be reached in Paris in a month's time.

While there is likely to be a high degree of political recognition of the need for action, the bottom-up approach on the basis of national pledges has been shown to be insufficient. The national pledges that have been put forward will not be adequate to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. The United Nations did an analysis which has shown that 3° Celsius of global warming is likely on the basis of the voluntary national pledges. In Paris, many civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations will focus on the need for a process to improve, ratchet up or increase commitments and to ensure that this procedure is a core part of the agreement. In other words, we would not simply have a process of reviewing the pledges, known as intended nationally determined contributions, INDCs, every few years. Instead, the INDCs would be analysed early and there would be rolling cycles of commitments.

Our other focus is on the need for a long-term objective based on the latest available scientific evidence. This means that to prevent the 3° temperature increase, fossil fuels must be phased out and a process introduced for achieving 100% renewable energies. This means achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Many non-governmental organisations are focusing on the need for human rights protections to be integrated as a core part of the agreement. The principal reason for this is that climate impacts and the actions taken to mitigate them have significant potential to undermine human rights. For example, the use of biomass or biofuels to reduce emissions can have the effect of increasing competition for land. The upshot of this is that the poorest and most vulnerable people can be displaced from their land as a result of land grabs. For this reason, human rights protections need to be a core element of the agreement.

In addition, climate finance is a major part of the agreement and relates both to pre-2020 and post-2020 processes. Climate finance is financial support to ensure that the most vulnerable communities can adapt to current and future impacts and develop in a sustainable fashion, in other words, development will not be based on fossil fuels, as has been the case here. Trócaire and other organisations are very much involved in ensuring that there is proper adaptation to climate change. Improving systems in sustainable agriculture is one example of the type of adaptation currently taking place using climate finance.

Having provided a brief overview of the agreement, I will now address what actions need to be taken at a European Union and national level. The next slide features two statements from the recent encyclical by Pope Francis. Members may ask why a Papal encyclical features in a presentation on climate change. The encyclical, which was released in June 2015, is an excellent document that sets out the grounds for climate action. It makes clear that the need for a climate response is effectively a moral and ethical issue. The two statements I have included note the injustice of allowing the most vulnerable to pay the high costs of climate impacts and of developed countries taking a business as usual approach that hampers the finalisation of a new international agreement.

We have spoken a great deal about climate justice and the need for an equitable response. What is a fair response and how can we support equitable action by developed countries? Civil society organisations have carried out a detailed technical assessment of how countries need to respond in respect of the INDCs or climate pledges they made as part of the Paris agreement. This analysis includes the level of emissions that needs to be reduced, the pledges that have been made by countries and an assessment of their capacity, on the basis of income and wealth, to produce a fair share. The analysis shows that the European Union's response in terms of mitigation and reducing emissions is approximately one fifth of its fair share.

How must the European Union respond? I will not discuss this in great deal other than to note that the EU's pledge or INDC to reduce emissions by at least 40% is too low and must be increased. EU legislation, particularly on energy efficiency and renewable energies, needs to be improved. Fossil fuel subsidies must be phased out, as must the use of coal. We must also address land emissions effectively.

I will provide a little more context on the European Union's response to climate finance before doing the same for Ireland. What can the EU do to provide more climate finance? It can ensure that finance provided is new and additional to existing overseas development aid. This revenue can be generated by auctions of emissions rights under the emissions credits system. The revenues from such auctions could be used to generate climate finance. We are strongly focused on ways in which climate finance can be generated. Ireland has, however, been silent on this proposal. At European Union level, we are also strongly focused on the provision of grants for adaptation. This means avoiding the use of loans, which countries would struggle to repay. We should also have targets for climate finance post-2020.

Having provided the EU context, I will move on to Irish foreign policy. In May last, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, made a powerful statement on Ireland's inaction or rather its need to take action on climate change. To be clear on this matter, Ireland is not in a leadership position in its climate response. The UN Secretary General focused on the need for a whole of government approach to climate change and the risks for Irish foreign policy if inaction continues. What is the level of inaction? The commitment made under the 2012 Kyoto Protocol was achieved largely due to the impact of the recession. However, Ireland has not had a strategy since 2012.

We have a climate Bill, which I hope will be finalised in the coming weeks. We are one of only four member states that is not meeting its 2020 EU targets. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has clearly stated that we are not on a path to meeting our 2020 and 2030 emission reduction commitments.

To reduce emissions, we need to finalise and implement a mitigation plan as part of the climate Bill as early as possible. We must ensure that Government policies that affect developing countries work to promote poverty reduction. We need coherence between our domestic and development policies. This commitment was set out in Irish Aid's document, One World, One Future: Ireland's Policy for International Development. There needs to be action on two key commitments within that document, namely, producing a report on policy coherence and using a relevant interdepartmental committee to review that coherence.

The final few slides are on what Ireland needs to do regarding climate finance. As part of the previous Copenhagen Conference of the Parties, COP, there was a commitment that developed countries would generate $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020. This may sound like an extremely large or aspirational figure, but it must be put in the context of subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which amount to approximately five times that. Ireland's fast start financing, which supports adaptation and resilience, totalled approximately $100 million between 2010 and 2012. This was new and additional to overseas aid but, since 2011, it has counted as part of our overseas aid. Our contributions to the $100 billion commitment should not result in commensurate reductions in our aid programme. In other words, this should not be an accounting or labelling exercise. The $100 billion is to be delivered internationally through the Green Climate Fund, GCF. The first period for generating funds to that is 2012 to 2018. Unfortunately, at the last COP in Lima, Ireland was one of only four countries that had not made any pledge to it. This was a source of some embarrassment and we were given a fossil of the day "award", that is, when environmental organisations during negotiations single out the worst performing countries. This slide shows the delivery of our "award". By the end of that COP, the other three countries - Belgium, Austria and Australia - had made pledges.

In 2015, we did not provide any contribution to the fund. However, there was a pledge of €2 million as part of the 2016 budget. The committee may see this as a positive and believe that we have taken a step in the right direction, but the €2 million is insufficient and dwarfed by the pledges and contributions - what is actually delivered - of other EU member states of the same capacity and population. We have not made a pledge for subsequent years that is in line with similarly developed countries.

I discussed the EU context, but how will Ireland deliver these funds? As part of our Stop Climate Chaos coalition, NGOs have done a great deal of research into what is the best approach. One of our recommendations is for a separate fund to be established to ensure that financing is new and additional. This was also recommended in 2013 by the Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht. To generate these revenues, we recommend using the carbon tax or emission trading revenues. There is precedence for this, in that a similar fund was set up in Scotland.

Mr. Clarken gave an overview of climate impacts and the case for climate justice. Our response needs to be done on the basis of climate justice. It is clear that the effects of climate change are undermining human rights in developing countries and that Ireland's response is insufficient.

To summarise our final recommendations, which we hope that the committee can advance, Ireland needs to make a significantly increased pledge, by which I mean ten or 20 times the existing pledge, to the GCF in line with our capacity and what other member states have done. This can be generated through the establishment of a climate justice fund. At EU level, Ireland needs to support ways in which climate finance can be generated, namely, the auctioning of emissions rights. To mitigate and reduce emissions, we must finalise and implement the mitigation plan as soon as possible under the climate Bill and take action on our existing commitments on policy coherence.

I thank the committee. I have set out a lot of information for it to consider.