Bulldozers at the gate

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THE BIG IDEA

BULLDOZERS AT THE GATES — Here’s a novel idea: Let’s save the forests. As the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, gets underway, the first big promise is about deforestation.

More than 100 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, have pledged to halt and even reverse forest loss by 2030. They have financial backing from a dozen wealthy nations, including the U.S. and Canada, that promise to spend $12 billion over the next five years to help the effort. The private sector will throw in another $7 billion.

This isn’t new. Dozens of world leaders made a similar announcement at the U.N. climate summit in 2014, and things have gotten only worse. The rate of tree-cover loss has increased by 40 percent, and countries are spending a fraction of the money needed to protect, restore and sustainably manage forests.

This is new: On Monday, Indigenous people won global recognition that securing their land rights could help the climate. Indigenous populations hold an estimated 65 percent of the world’s land area, but only 10 percent is recognized under national laws. Even less is officially registered, according to the Rights and Resources Initiative.

About $1.7 billion of the funding announced Monday will be steered toward that cause.

A plea: “Don’t make political promises that you’re not going to keep,” Tuntiak Katan, a Shuar from Ecuador who represents the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, told the assembly. “Don’t make finance announcements or announcements on the climate if you’re not going to work with Indigenous communities.”

“Please don’t murder us,” Katan said. “Don’t kill us.”

Indigenous communities have long been overlooked in the fight against climate change, but that’s started to shift. In March, a U.N.-backed review of more than 300 studies found that deforestation rates in Latin America and the Caribbean are significantly lower in indigenous and tribal territories where governments have formally recognized collective land rights.

Still, the lands they manage are increasingly at risk, particularly in the Amazon Basin. From 2000 to 2016, intact forest in the region declined by about 5 percent in Indigenous areas, compared with 11 percent in non-Indigenous areas, according to the review.

“Bulldozers are at the gates, so these communities need support,” said Kevin Currey, a program officer for the Ford Foundation, which is committing $100 million to the deforestation effort.

“It’s also cost effective,” Currey said. “Governments can title land cheaply. What’s been missing is the money. This is a historic pledge.”

ONE MORE FOREST ANNOUNCEMENT — Six more companies have joined the public-private LEAF Coalition. The group, launched in April, plans to spend $1 billion to buy carbon credits from countries that reduce tropical deforestation. Newcomers to the group include BlackRock Inc., Walmart Inc., Burberry Group PLC, Inditex, Intertek Group PLC and SAP.

YOU TELL US

We have boots on the ground in Glasgow. POLITICO’s Zack Colman, Karl Mathiesen, Zia Weise and Stuart Lau are covering the proceedings.

Send thoughts, story tips and pumpkin-spice lattes to [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter @ceboudreau and @Woellert. FOMO? Sign up for The Long Game.

Thanks to Shayna Greene for her help this week.

COP26 WATCH

BELCHING COWS AND JAMES BOND — And we’re off. Summit host U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson kicked off the proceedings Monday with a signature Boris-Johnson-y speech. It rained. The trains didn’t run on time. The time? One minute before midnight, Johnson said, metaphorically.

Boris is always a tough act to follow. President Joe Biden’s speech was sleepy by comparison. And Chinese President Xi Jinping was a no-show. The U.S. and Europe are working on a Plan B to limit climate change without China’s help.

The president made up for his lackluster speech on Tuesday, tossing a regulatory bomb at methane emissions from oil and gas.

This is big. Natural gas, a top source of methane, has supplanted coal as a primary power source, sparked an economic boom in states across the country, and turned the U.S. into an energy exporter. It also has made methane the world’s second-most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.

The announcement could give Biden a much-needed climate win at Glasgow even as congressional Democrats haggle — still — over a $1.5 trillion-plus reconciliation bill that would be the largest investment in decarbonization in U.S. history.

Breaking: The EU, U.S. and U.K. announced an $8.5 billion deal to help South Africa decarbonize its energy supply.

COP CALENDAR — Monday was deforestation day. Tuesday we get more news on methane. Wednesday will focus on financial services. Thursday is energy day and Friday is all about youth and public empowerment. Here’s a full rundown of the summit’s themes.

Sustainable Finance

CARNEY’S ACRONYMS — The financial services industry is under pressure to starve greenhouse gas emitters of cash, and U.N. special envoy Mark Carney has put his political muscle and reputation behind a clutter of net-zero coalitions promising to do just that.

But as the acronyms multiply, banks, insurers, institutional investors and others stand accused of too much talk, too little action. Paris-based Reclaim Finance, a nonprofit advocacy group, on Tuesday said the industry had succumbed to “analysis paralysis,” and that its toothless campaigns serve mostly to give members cover.

Greenwashing, the report called it.

Grab the popcorn. The accusations, which Reclaim Finance circulated before publication, stirred the pot.

Carney defended his Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero on Monday, before the report was published, and promised to release a GFANZ scorecard at COP26 on Wednesday. “There is significant momentum and credible, impactful action,” he wrote.

The U.N.-convened Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance issued a prebuttal, saying its members are changing the way they do business. Its members, which include insurance giants Swiss Re and AXA, will begin reporting on their progress next year, under the U.N.’s watch.

“We have made robust first steps,” alliance Chair Günther Thallinger wrote on the group’s website. “A simple ‘no investment in fossil energy — especially oil and gas’ would create social and economic inequities, and thus would ultimately slow down the crucial transition into renewable energy.”

“It looks like our report already has had some impact,” Reclaim Finance senior analyst Patrick McCully said in an interview.

McCully wants members of GFANZ, Carney’s coalition of coalitions, to withdraw funding from the biggest polluters while they figure out a broader strategy.

“They all have taken this approach of working out these cross-economy targets,” McCully said. “In the immediate short term, it’s really obvious who’s responsible for the bulk of emissions. It’s the fossil fuel companies.”

As green finance grows its ranks, consequences could be at hand. The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative — a GFANZ member and McCully target — said Monday that its members now have $4.2 trillion aligned with net-zero targets, more than a third of the group’s collective assets under management.

The next step will be ensuring companies follow through, said Kirsten Snow Spalding, senior program director of the Ceres Investor Network, a leading member of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM for those keeping tabs on the acronyms).

“From the investor perspective, the real news is not that we’ve got more and more commitments, but that we’re making them real,” Spalding said in an interview. “We’re getting to see the first blitz of interim targets.”

“There’s going to be market punishment,” she said. “Anybody who doesn’t take demonstrable action is going to lose credibility.”

BEYOND COP26 — Academics in the U.K. have launched legal action to speed up their pension fund’s divestment of fossil fuel companies. The £80 billion Universities Superannuation Scheme is the U.K.’s largest private-sector pension plan, with 430,000 members. The Financial Times has more.


WASHINGTON WATCH

GREEN IS PURPLE — In Washington, where Democrats are trying to pass a bill, any bill, their frustrated and increasingly alarmed climate allies are pointing out that green jobs are neither blue nor red. A report from business advocacy group E2 found that more than 3 million clean-energy jobs are nearly evenly split across Republican and Democratic congressional districts.

Nearly all U.S. congressional districts are home to at least a thousand clean energy jobs, the data shows. The vast majority of the work is outside of Democratic urban strongholds.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, announced the findings at a press conference. Have a go at the database.

DATA DIVE

And we’ll leave you with this. Until next week, everyone.