In the lead up to the COP21 climate negotiations this December in Paris, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is currently hosting its annual Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) session in Geneva, Switzerland. This session, ADP 2.8, comes just two months after the conclusion of COP20 in Lima, Peru, and presents the Parties -- the negotiating bodies for each country -- with a need to further develop and clarify the text that came out of Lima. This text will be used during the final 2015 climate negotiations in Paris.
Janice Meier was blogging from Geneva.
Fighting climate change: an idea whose time has come.
This was the Venezuelan delegate’s summary of where we were on the last day of the Geneva climate negotiations. It’s a beautiful vision, and one that I see as potentially achievable, but as in all things outside the “negotiating bubble,” prospects of that vision face a stark reality.
To begin with the reason for optimism: We’ve met the ADP’s mandate to finish a (voluminous) draft text for negotiation in Bonn, Germany in June, and we’ve gone further to agree on a direction to narrow down that text. Despite some initial confusion, the negotiations finished a full three days early, and Parties continued into the last day to praise the transparent manner in which decisions were made. This resulted in a true Party-owned text. In a marked turnaround from Lima, inter-Party cooperation and confidence in the Co-chairs seems to be leaving Geneva on a high note.
And some hoped we would go even further. In a last-day Contact Group session, the EU pointed out that we “did the bare minimum” of what was expected, pointing to the huge volume of text that needed sifting. I infer from the EU’s intervention that they were disappointed that we hadn’t begun culling the text, but then again, the EU was not responsible for making certain that the text “stayed banked,” the co-chairs were. Essentially, there are times for caution as well as ambition.
And nearly every Party speaking in the first ADP contact group on Friday said that without a rapid scale-up of success facilitated by careful steering from the Co-chairs in a quick reflection note and/or detailed scenario note addressing a variety of matters -- from no more than two (or three) parallel sessions to the suggestion to balance Work Stream 1 (WS1, long term goal) and Work Stream 2 (WS2, pre-2020 work), adaptation and mitigation, and all of the above together with Means of Implementation (MOI, Finance, Technology, and Capacity Building) -- the agreement in Paris may be but a vision.
And now the starkness: This was the easiest meeting of the year. We broached some sensitive issues but didn’t “negotiate” them. Now the rubber meets the road because during the June meeting in Bonn and at the two subsequent meetings in late August and October, we need to massage this mass of thoughts into strategic choices, including framing issues for decisions through Minister-level negotiations in Paris. These issues could include differentiation (how should countries at differing levels of development be treated differently), completeness (what is the scope of required information in the “contributions” — do they include information on the provision of MOI), cycles (what period of time the contribution covers),, comparability (common methodology for metrics to facilitate comparing effort) balance between focus on adaptation versus mitigation, the spectre of Loss and Damage ( how are vulnerable countries compensated when adaptation is no longer possible) and more.
So in my view, we are in good position but at a crossroad. Nearly all parties are cooperating. But all Parties, especially our beloved United States, will need “continued motivation” on the road to Paris as well as assurance that we do intend to hold their feet to the fire.
So what are we, fellow Sierra Clubbers and Civil Society, going to do to keep up the support and the pressure? Perhaps bring home some of that Geneva Spirit and get cooperation in high gear to ensure everyone gets the message that now is the time for action.