Norway is poised to adopt a carbon neutral target for 2030, despite resistance from the minority coalition government.

In a parliamentary debate on Tuesday morning, opposition lawmakers had a majority in favour of the environment committee proposal.

It reinstates a commitment first agreed in 2008 but scrapped after Copenhagen talks failed to produce an international climate deal.

How can the country live up to this bold promise?

The first thing to emphasise is that nobody expects Norway to achieve this through domestic measures.

Bountiful hydropower resources mean the country’s electricity supply – usually the first target for climate policy – is already virtually fossil free.

Elsewhere, total emissions have barely changed since 1990. Increases from the oil and gas sector cancelled out efficiency improvements over the past 25 years.

More aggressive action will be needed to meet the target Norway submitted to the Paris climate deal: a 40% cut by 2030, in line with EU efforts.

The flagship policy is to electrify road transport. Widely reported as a “ban” on sales of fossil fuelled cars from 2025, climate minister Vidar Helgesen clarified on twitter it was more of an aspiration.

Other options include capturing and storing emissions from cement production, ramping up biofuels and using bio char in steelworks.

Even the most ambitious package suggested by the Norwegian Environment Agency in a recent paper would only reduce emissions 31% from 1990 levels by 2030.

That leaves at least 36 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to offset – comparable to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s carbon footprint (excluding forestry).

“This is not something every country can do, because then there would not be enough emissions to buy,” notes Anne Therese Gullberg, an adviser to Norway’s Labour Party.

Where will the offsets come from? The short answer is: nobody knows.

Norway is not a member of the EU but takes part in its carbon market. It is also lobbying for the right to buy allowances in sectors not covered by the emissions trading scheme. That could involve paying Poland to insulate buildings or curb fertiliser use, for example.

Failing that – and the EU rules for next decade are not due to be finalised until late 2017 – Oslo must turn to international markets.

That picture is even murkier, says Stig Schjolset, analyst at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon: “The outlook for global carbon markets after 2020 is pretty uncertain.”

The Paris Agreement allows for international transfers, but it is unclear whether there is sufficient demand – or supply – to create a viable market.

Burned by phony carbon offset scandals, the EU has ruled out the use of foreign credits to meet its 2030 goal.

A few countries are still interested – Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand – but will they need a sufficient volume to justify a credible monitoring regime?

On the other side, developing countries now have their own emissions targets to meet. They may be less willing to sell credit for reductions made within their borders.

The Norwegian government has 14 years to figure this out. The carbon neutral commitment kicks in on 1 January 2030. It says nothing about what happens in 2029.

Blind spot

The Norwegian sector with the biggest climate impact – oil and gas – keeps a low profile in the national debate.

Sitting on the biggest hydrocarbon reserves in Europe, Norway’s wealth is built on fossil fuels. In 2014, petroleum accounted for 45% of the country’s export revenues and more than 20% of GDP.

Most of that is burned elsewhere, showing up in other countries’ carbon accounts.

Flaring, venting and methane leakage all count on Norwegian territory, though, plus gas-fired power generation on offshore rigs.

The Environment Agency does not include emissions from this source in its mitigation proposals, leaving it to the Petroleum Directorate.

The latter’s “prognosis” (not a target) is for CO2 to stabilise over the next five years. Meanwhile, it continues to grant exploration licences, including – controversially – in the Arctic.

NGOs are considering a legal challenge, on the basis costly polar drilling is incompatible with global climate targets. Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Norway, tells Climate Home they hope to make a decision in early autumn.

“We want to see reduced activities in the oil and gas sector,” he says. “Volume, not only symbols.”

Norway’s grand gesture is welcome, but sooner or later it must face the fossils in its fjords.

(climatechangenews)

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Oslo REDD Exchange.

And it is with great hope that I see the recent developments in the climate change and sustainable development agenda.

The Paris agreement ended up being more ambitious than anyone had dared imagine.

I am especially happy that it recognises the role of forests in stabilising our climate. As do the Sustainable Development Goals.

For the first time, we have reached international agreement that there can be no sustainable future for this planet unless we protect and restore tropical forests.

Tropical forests support an impressive range of biodiversity. More than half of the world’s plant and animal species live in rainforests. Biodiversity loss is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today.

When I talk about the Sustainable Development Goals, I often make the point that simply establishing goals will not in itself end extreme poverty. Action must follow promises. The same goes for deforestation.

In April last year, I made a visit to the rainforests of Indonesia that I will never forget.

On the island of Sumatra, I met a people called Orang Rimba.

Literally, this means people of the forest.

The Orang Rimba have hunted, gathered and grown what they need in the forest for centuries.

Now, the forests they depend on are diminishing.

Increasingly, they find themselves living on palm oil plantations, which provide hardly any of the ecosystem services that used to sustain them.

This story is not unique to Indonesia.

On the contrary, the same story is unfolding in many tropical forest countries every day.

We are here today to change this story.

If it is to have a happy conclusion, we need to end deforestation. And this will only be possible if governments are involved.

Indonesia is emerging as a case in point.

President Jokowi has made three groundbreaking decisions:

• not to issue any new mining or palm oil permits,
• to protect all remaining peatlands and restore those already damaged, and
• to review existing permits for forest- and peatland areas.

There is no time to lose.

A few days ago, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL revealed that environmental crimes now make up the world’s fourth largest crime sector, growing at two to three times the pace of the global economy.

These are crimes against future generations as well as the present. They increase the fragility of an already fragile planet, and threaten to undermine states that are on the way to peace and stability.

Developing countries should not have to bear the burden of forest protection alone. Over the last eight years, Norway – together with partners such as Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States – has worked with forest countries, multilateral organisations, civil society and private companies to support them.

One of our long-standing partners, Guyana, has shown how a nationally owned system for monitoring and reporting on forest cover can be developed to a high international standard, almost from scratch.

Countries with major development challenges can be the most ambitious. Ethiopia plans to keep emissions at 2010 levels, while becoming a middle-income country by 2025. An ambitious green economy plan will show the way. Norway will continue to partner Ethiopia in realising this vision.

Brazil has demonstrated that it is possible to balance the demands for economic growth with mitigating climate change.

Over a period of ten years, Brazil reduced deforestation in the Amazon by more than 70 per cent. At the same time the economy grew, agricultural production in the same region increased, and poverty was reduced.

Three factors were key to this success:
• law enforcement,
• the extension of indigenous territories and conservation areas in the Amazon, and
• the recently renewed Amazon soy moratorium, which prevents companies from selling soybeans that were produced on deforested land.
State governors, forward-looking companies, indigenous peoples and activists from all parts of Brazil played a part.

I’m therefore proud that last year Norway fulfilled its promise to pay one billion USD into the Amazon Fund based on these results, and that we have agreed to extend our partnership with Brazil up to 2020.

We first entered into this partnership in 2008. Norway recognises that reducing deforestation requires long-term investments at scale.
That is why my Government decided to extend Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative until 2030.

Brazil is not alone.

Colombia is using its transition to peace as a stepping-stone to green growth. Two weeks ago, Norway, Germany and the UK transferred 6 million US dollars in response to Colombia’s achievements in reducing deforestation in 2013 and 2014. Colombia has also launched its Amazon Vision programme to improve livelihoods, indigenous peoples’ rights and spatial planning in the Amazon.

In this way, Colombia is showing great leadership in protecting its incredible biodiversity. Did you know that Colombia is home to more bird species than any other country in the world?

I am also confident that the Peruvian Government will continue on its path of including indigenous peoples’ land tenure rights and production–protection strategies in the Amazon in its strategy.

Liberia is seeking to keep emissions low while promoting inclusive and sustainable growth by giving rural communities a key role in forest management.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has committed itself to stabilising its forest cover by 2030.

Local governments are also taking promising jurisdictional approaches to reducing deforestation in all the main tropical forest countries.

Indigenous peoples are showing that, with secure tenure, they are the best guardians of the forest. There can simply be no REDD+ without the participation of indigenous peoples and local communities.

The private sector is coming on board. The soy moratorium and the commitments to deforestation-free palm oil are good examples.

Civil society is pushing world leaders to do more, as well as promoting transparency and accountability, and providing expertise.

The successes we achieved in New York and Paris would not have been possible without the leadership shown by all these groups.

Today, Norway is endorsing the Amsterdam declaration on removing deforestation from the supply chains of agricultural commodities to Europe, with a particular focus on palm oil.

In this way, we are supporting the efforts of the private sector to ensure fully sustainable palm oil supply chains by 2020.

Later today, the Storting – the Norwegian parliament – will ratify the Paris agreement.

And tomorrow, Norway and the United States will sign a Joint Statement on Deeper Collaboration on Forests and Climate Change. I am very pleased to announce that US Secretary of State John Kerry will join Minister of Climate and Environment Vidar Helgesen at this event.

Our forest and climate partnerships are broadening and deepening. This reflects the fact that forests play a key role in mitigating climate change.

Tropical forests can provide one third of the climate change mitigation needed to stay on a two-degree pathway or below over the next decades.

By protecting our forests, we are thus making a crucial contribution to climate change mitigation and global sustainability, and – ultimately – to the future of humanity.

On June 14th and 15th, 500 politicians, private sector companies, indigenous peoples representatives, researchers and civil society organizations from all over the world gather in Oslo to discuss how to stop the destruction of the world’s tropical forests.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg will officially open the conference. Ministers from Norway’s partner countries are participating. So will the newly appointed head of the United Nations Environmental Program, Erik Solheim and Norway’s Climate and Environment Minister, Vidar Helgesen.

– The Paris Agreement confirms that reducing emissions from the destruction of tropical forests is an integral part of the solution to the world’s climate issues. This destruction must be halted within the next few years if we are to reach the global climate targets and the UN Sustainability Goals. This is one of the large-scale climate measures in which we see progress. We have invited the key stakeholders to Oslo to share experiences and challenge each other for even better results going forwards, says Climate and Environment Minister, Vidar Helgesen.

The Oslo REDD Exchange conference gathers politicians at national and regional levels from partner countries, environmental and indigenous peoples organizations, researchers, and representatives from paper and palm oil companies that have made commitments to reduce deforestation.

The Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative has since 2008 invested in measures to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+). The work is implemented by governments, the UN and the World Bank, indigenous peoples and civil society in forest countries. A number of the countries and organizations represented at the conference have received support from Norway to pursue their agendas.

Several of the measures to reduce deforestation will be implemented at regional and local levels. Regional governments will therefore be key actors of change. The conference includes regional governors from the key partner countries Peru and Indonesia. Norway recently announced its first disbursement under the Peru Partnership. The funds will be allocated to measures against illegal logging and to secure land rights by means of titling the land of at least 68 indigenous groups in Ucayali and San Martin. The Governors from Ucayali, San Martin and Loreto in Peru will be part of the conference.

The Oslo REDD Exchange 2016 is the most important global arena for climate and rainforest since the historic Paris Agreement. The conference is hosted by Norad at the request of the Ministry of Climate and Environment.

(NRK/Press release)