The end of May 2015 marks 200 days to the highly anticipated Paris Climate Agreement. The month of May and the first two weeks of June mark busy schedules for global business leaders, climate change negotiators, environment and climate change ministers and leaders of countries.
Ministers of environment and climate change met between May 17 and 19, 2015, in Berlin, at the Petersburg Climate Dialogue to discuss the Paris outcome. The ministers emphasised the need to accelerate progress towards an ambitious agreement at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP-21) in December, in Paris.
It was also highlighted that a successful outcome in Paris means an ambitious and balanced outcome; ambitious national contributions; functional means of implementation (finance, technology and capacity building); and sound rules-based agreement for facilitating implementation of obligations.
Following the Petersburg Dialogue, Francois Hollande, president of France, the incoming President of COP-21, invited business leaders from across the world in Paris for the preparatory conference before COP-21. He stated businesses have to play a key role in reaching a successful outcome; they need to cut emissions, develop new clean technologies and find ways to be energy efficient. The Paris Business Summit mobilised 25 worldwide business networks and the business leaders pledged to lead the low-carbon, climate resilient economies.
As a precursor to the Paris Climate Agreement, climate change negotiators of 196 countries, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Bonn, Germany, between June 1 and 11, 2015. The technical negotiators of the Paris Climate Agreement had to deal with a 90-page long text they themselves produced.
The aim of the June session was to produce a streamlined, concise and manageable negotiating text. Nonetheless, the first week of negotiation passed without any progress.
That was not a surprise as designing an ambitious agreement requires it to be environmentally ambitious, which entails stopping the increase of the global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and being fair and equitable to all countries. The challenge, therefore, is to harmonise countries of different levels of economic development, different economic priorities, different past, current and future emissions, negotiating an international treaty.
Meanwhile, during these intense weeks of negotiations, the leaders of the G-7, met in Elmau, Germany, for their annual summit. Their declaration stressed the need for urgent and concrete action to address climate change. The leaders affirmed their strong determination for adopting an agreement that is ambitious, robust, inclusive, and that reflects evolving national circumstances. The declaration, coming out in the midst of the negotiations, put climate change negotiations under pressure.
The declaration also raised one of the political areas in the negotiations – differentiations of countries under the 2015 climate agreement. Differentiation established under the UNFCCC means developed versus developing, which now has evolved to include further consideration of national circumstances.
Putting the political issues like differentiation, legal form and structure of the 2015 agreement aside, climate change negotiators made slow progress by cutting down the 90-pages to 85 pages. Furthermore, negotiators mandated the delegates co-chairing the negotiation, to table a concise and streamlined text. This is expected to step up the gear of the negotiations. It is expected that the co-chairs’ text should also make it easier for governments and ministers to identify the key political decisions to be taken at, and in advance of COP21.
Several key ministerial meetings are yet to be organised by France and other countries over the coming months. The path to Paris is now being negotiated on both political and technical levels.
This, to some extent, is comforting to countries that believe in the multilateral process and rule-based regime needed for addressing climate change. Climate change negotiators, although appreciative of the political attention, which leads to international cooperation and climate action even from big business, still need the space to discuss the technical details of the agreement. The political negotiations, as their nature indicate, will be eventually bargained, ensuring a successful ambitious, fair and equitable agreement in Paris.
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