Press Release, September 3, 2013 (PDF)

Third Meeting of the High Level Assembly, Communique (PDF)

Climate and Clean Air Coalition High Level Assembly Announces Ambitious Agenda

Oslo, 3 September 2013 – Ministers of the Environment, CEOs and other senior officials of governments and nonprofit organizations released a communiqué here today celebrating 18 months of progress and laying out an ambitious agenda for the future in the fight to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). The communiqué emerged from the High Level Assembly of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (CCAC), which met in an intensive day-long session of discussion and negotiation.

Norway’s Minister of Environment and Minister of International Development served as co-hosts of the Assembly and made a significant announcement early. “We want to see other countries act,” said Bård Vegar Sohjell, Minister of Environment. “We want to enable those with the will, but not necessarily the resources, to act. Concrete efforts in developing countries are important. We are pleased to announce that Norway, in addition to strengthening our efforts at national level for this year and next year collectively, will contribute an additional 110 million Norwegian kroner (approximately 20 million US dollars) to reduce emissions of short lived climate pollutants, with a main focus on efforts in developing countries.”

Sohjell added: “We must act together. We must encourage each other. And we must challenge and support each other to do more.”

The high-level officials at the Assembly, representing many of the 72 partners of the CCAC, encouraged the rapid scale-up of the current CCAC initiatives to mitigate SLCPs, such as efforts to reduce methane and black carbon emissions from the oil and gas industry as well as from municipal solid waste and landfills. The partners also agreed to support a phasedown in the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons under the Montreal Protocol, announced support of CCAC’s long-term goal to virtually eliminate fine particles and black carbon emissions from heavy-duty diesel vehicles and engines, and welcomed the Coalition’s efforts to help nations conduct national action planning on SLCPs. They also agreed to support the implementation of policies and technologies to modernize brick production worldwide.

“The rapid growth, enthusiasm and potential for this Coalition to catalyse fast action across a range of sustainability challenges, including climate change, is one of the really positive developments of the past year. We are proud to have played a key role in this effort. Today important steps have been taken to scale up and accelerate the collective ambition of this unique and inspiring partnership as we seek to complement the wider work under the UN Climate Convention," said UN Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner.

The communiqué encouraged a global awareness-raising effort on the urgent need to prevent air pollution-related diseases, which account for more than six million deaths each year. Through the communiqué, CCAC partners encouraged Health and Environment Ministries to work together toward greater global awareness.

One of the CCAC’s newest partners, the World Health Organization (WHO), noted the serious impact of SLCPs on health and the potential benefits from addressing the problem head-on.“Interventions to reduce SLCPs can yield major health benefits and prevent child pneumonia as well as non-communicable diseases like heart and chronic lung disease,” said Hans Troedsson, Executive Director of the Director General's Office for the World Health Organization. “SLCPs cause a particular burden on women and children in developing countries. A partnership between health, environment and other actors to reduce SLCPs, as facilitated by the Coalition, can bring synergies and enable multiple benefits for development, health and climate. Now that we are partners in the Coalition we welcome the opportunity to help expand the Coalition’s public health efforts.”

CCAC partners encouraged the bolstering of financial flows in order to catalyze significant global investment in SLCP reduction. The World Bank, a CCAC partner, released a report earlier in the dayentitled “Integration of short-lived climate pollutants in World Bank activities,” which described whatthe Bank is aiming to do in its portfolios, including integration of SLCP mitigation into development projects. The Bank encourages SLCP reduction potential in investments across a range of activities,such as bus and rail transport systems, solid waste collection and disposal, cookstoves, kilns, and rice irrigation and wastewater management.

“From our perspective, aggressive action on SLCPs, in tandem with addressing other pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, provides our clients time to invest and adapt [for economic growth],” said Rachel Kyte, Vice President for Sustainability Development at the World Bank. “There are clear development benefits here that we should never lose sight of we’re working to help manage lives better. Our initial work in this area revolved around determining what our exposure is. Now, it revolves aroundprogress and projects to reduce SLCPs. It shows the potential if we really drive this forward.”

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short Lived Climate Pollutants is a partnership of governments, intergovernmental organizations, the private sector, the environmental community, and other members of civil society. The Coalition is government-led but is highly cooperative and voluntary. Short-lived climate pollutants are agents that have a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere—a few days to a few decades—but also a warming influence on climate as well as, in many cases, detrimental impacts on human health, agriculture and ecosystems.

For more information, please contact:

• Nick Nuttall, Director UNEP Division of Communications and Public Information/UNEP Spokesperson, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +254 733 632755
• Keith Collins, Communications consultant to UNEP, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +41 76 703 53 33
• CCAC web site: http://www.unep.org/ccac

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The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants
Third Meeting of the High Level Assembly, Oslo
Communiqué
3 September 2013

We, Ministers, heads of organizations, and other high-level representatives of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (CCAC), came together today to reiterate our firm commitment to work together to address near-term climate change, improve air quality and public health, and strengthen food and energy security, by taking urgent action to reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) like black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and many hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). We recognize the need for these actions to complement ambitious global reductions of long-lived greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to fully address the issue of climate change.

Action based on strong science

We thank the distinguished members of the CCAC Science Advisory Panel and the scientific community for documenting the importance of reducing SLCPs as a complement to action on carbon dioxide. Recent studies have reinforced the findings of the 2011 UNEP assessments and indicate that certain benefits of reducing SLCPs may be greater than previously understood, in particular due to increased estimates of black carbon’s impact on climate and methane leakage rates. Studies have further highlighted that
reducing SLCPs in the Arctic and mountain glacier regions can significantly slow the pace of warming and melting of ice and snow. Indoor and outdoor air pollution, a large proportion of which can be reduced by measures focusing on black carbon, has been estimated by the 2012 Global Burden of Disease report to cause more than six million premature deaths each year, with a disproportionate impact on women and children. Reducing SLCPs can also help rural economies, with current estimates showing the potential to save about 50 million tonnes of crops each year.

A strong start

After only 18 months, the CCAC has grown tenfold from seven Partners to 72 – 34 countries and 38 organizations. We welcome all new Partners to our voluntary and action-oriented Coalition. Partners are undertaking a variety of ambitious efforts in our own countries and organizations to reduce SLCPs.

Scaling-up global efforts

The Coalition is working to catalyze scaled up efforts on SLCPs, which has the potential to slow down global warming by up to 0.5°C by 2050 as well as improve air quality. To help achieve its objectives, the Coalition has launched 10 high-impact global initiatives, including:

• Oil and Natural Gas Production – The oil and gas sector accounts for roughly 20 percent of global anthropogenic methane emissions and substantial amounts of black carbon. As referenced in thedeclaration signed by 13 CCAC ministers and building on existing initiatives, we aim to achieve substantial reductions in both methane and black carbon. We commit to enhance high-level outreachto oil and gas companies to undertake upfront, voluntary commitments to use “best-in-class” methane reduction methods. We will also intensify efforts with companies to reduce black carbon. 
• Municipal Solid Waste – Landfills are the third largest source of global anthropogenic methane emissions, and open garbage burning emits black carbon and other pollutants, including dioxin emissions, a major health concern. More than 10 cities from around the world are already engaged in the initiative. We encourage additional cities to participate in this global network and to take concrete action to reduce SLCPs. We will call upon our waste experts to provide technical assistance. We will also work with domestic and international financing institutions to invest in new efforts on sustainable waste management in participating cities.
• HFC Alternative Technology and Standards – HFCs, potent greenhouse gases, have increased by approximately 8 percent per year from 2004 to 2008; without further action, these emissions are projected to accelerate rapidly. We will continue to promote climate-friendly alternatives and make efforts to reduce emissions of HFCs. CCAC Partner countries will adopt domestic approaches to encourage climate-friendly HFC alternative technologies and work toward a phasedown in the production and consumption of HFCs under the Montreal Protocol. We will work with international standards organizations to revise their standards to include climate-friendly HFC alternatives. 
• Heavy Duty Diesel Vehicles and Engines – The CCAC is actively working to virtually eliminate fine particles including black carbon emissions from heavy duty diesel vehicles and engines by building an international movement to steadily reduce sulphur in diesel fuel, establishing more stringent vehicle emission standards, cleaning up fleets – especially in cities and at ports – and improving energy and environmental efficiency in the movement of global goods by developing a Green Freight initiative.
• Supporting National Planning for Action on SLCPs (SNAP) – The CCAC is helping Partners to integrate SLCP mitigation in their national planning, including with a new customized CCAC Emissions Scenario and Benefits Assessment toolkit (available to all countries) as well as a SNAP Guidance Document. These tools will support countries in identifying and promoting the key mitigation measures that can bring rapid climate, health and environmental benefits. The initial four national planning projects in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana and Mexico are demonstrating the value of the national planning approach and SNAP, and we commit to rolling it out to additional CCAC countries.
• Brick Production – The CCAC is promoting the worldwide modernization of brick production and kilns to reduce black carbon emissions, and lessen the number of premature deaths in nearby communities caused by air pollution through enabling policy development and supporting technology deployment. We will also encourage domestic and international financing institutions to invest in new efforts on sustainable production of bricks.
• Household Cooking and Domestic Heating – The CCAC is targeting a key source of harmful black carbon emissions worldwide and helping improve living standards of the most vulnerable who are usually energy poor. This initiative is supporting clean cookstove entrepreneurs with projects that can significantly reduce SLCP emissions, developing global standards and testing protocols, and raising awareness about the benefits of clean cooking.
• Regional Assessments of SLCPs – The CCAC is embarking on an assessment of SLCPs in Latin America and the Caribbean, building on a successful regional inter-governmental consultation in the region, providing a framework for future national action. We intend to expand to other regions, including Asia and Africa.
• Agriculture – We welcome the recent launch of this initiative, with its plans to target methane and black carbon emissions, including from livestock, agricultural open burning, and rice paddies.

Maximizing health benefits

We are concerned by the scale of the public health impacts from air pollution, and specifically SLCPs like
black carbon and methane, which is a precursor to tropospheric ozone:

• We welcome the World Health Organization (WHO) as a new Partner in the CCAC and its leadership in addressing SLCPs. 
• We invite the WHO to (a) support better identification of health benefits and demonstrate how and where SLCP emissions reductions can contribute, (b) cooperate with Partners on existing efforts to estimate health benefits from CCAC initiatives and national actions, and (c) participate in the national action planning and regional assessments initiatives.
• We will undertake a global awareness-raising campaign on the urgent need to prevent air pollutionrelated diseases through action on SLCPs.
• We will establish a task force of CCAC Partner countries to develop a proposal for submission to the 67th World Health Assembly. We will review progress of the task force at our next meeting in Warsaw, Poland. 

Bolstering financial flows

We stress the importance of catalyzing significant global investment in SLCP reductions:

• We thank the donors to the CCAC Trust Fund, including Canada, Denmark, European Commission, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United States, and urge all Partners to redouble efforts to meet the Coalition’s goals for 2013 and beyond. 
• We recognize other financial and in-kind contributions from Partners supporting the Coalition’s goals, including through national programmes, capacity building, and international financial assistance. 
• We commend the World Bank’s efforts to integrate SLCPs into its activities and to establish a goal for securing as many SLCP reductions as possible.
• We invite regional development banks to join the Coalition and to identify ways of advancing the Coalition’s goals by mainstreaming SLCP reducing measures.
• CCAC Partner countries will explore mainstreaming of SLCPs into the Global Environment Facility (GEF) sixth replenishment process on climate change mitigation, and we invite the GEF to join the CCAC as a Partner.
• We strongly support the initiative of interested Partners to immediately launch a broad-based consultation to carry forward the recommendations of the international Methane Finance Study Group and the piloting of a global pay-for-performance fund to stimulate implementation of shovel-ready methane-reducing projects, including projects with a co-benefit of reducing black carbon emissions.
• We are pleased that the World Bank has agreed to set up and manage the “pay-for-performance” fund and urge CCAC Partners to participate in the design of the fund in consultation with other stakeholders. We welcome reporting on progress at our next High Level Assembly.
• We commission the CCAC’s Financing Mitigation of SLCPs Initiative to establish a Black Carbon Finance Study Group composed of interested Partners and other stakeholders to review potential strategies for supporting financial flows towards projects that can significantly reduce black carbon emissions. This Study Group would present its recommendations at the 2014 High Level Assembly.

Enhancing our own action

In joining the Coalition, we have endorsed meaningful action to address SLCPs. We, the ministers, heads of organizations and other high level representatives, will continue to ramp up our individual and collective efforts and identify opportunities for further SLCP reductions. We will work on scaled up action over the coming year, including in line with any National Action Planning processes for reducing SLCPs. We will again assess our progress at the CCAC High Level Assembly in 2014. 

For further information on the CCAC, please visit our website at: http://www.unep.org/ccac