Posts

COP24 Wrap Up

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Post by: Anna McGinn COP24 concluded on December 15, 2018 with agreement on a rulebook that the parties will follow in order to implement the Paris Agreement. The UMaine delegation had the opportunity to observe these tough negotiations which provided substantial insight into the challenges negotiators face in bringing all country positions together to the so-called landing zones of agreement. If you are interested in exploring analysis on the outcome of COP24, here are a couple articles I recommend: COP24 concludes with a leap by the COP24 presidency. Photo credit: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth IISD Reporting Services provides detailed reporting on negotiations throughout all environmentally-related international negotiating sessions. Here is their comprehensive summary of COP24 which includes background on the COPs leading up to Katowice and a breakdown of each of the final decisions coming out of COP24. This is a technical and excellent source to understan
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The rulebook has been adopted

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though they have kicked the can on a few issues... including article 6.
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Deadlock

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https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-accord-idUKKBN1OE0N9
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It is Saturday, still no final text...

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As I understand it, the hang up continues to be Article 6 which sets up non-market and market-based mechanisms for international cooperation.  There was a plenary scheduled this morning, then this afternoon.  We'll see!  You can watch the closing plenary (assuming it happens soon) here: https://unfccc-cop24.streamworld.de/ondemand
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We Are Still In: The United State Has Not Abandoned the Paris Agreement

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Posted by Alexander Rezk        (Myself and other Junior Scholars speaking with Billionaire Philanthropist Tom Steyer, Keynote          Speaker for We Are Still In's Reception at the U.S. Climate Action Center)         We waited, we wondered, and we searched. Finally, we found what we were looking for. On Friday December 7th, the United States made its unofficially official presence known at COP24 through the U.S. Climate Action Center. It is an odd thing, to be a world leading nation and only a half-willing participant in one of the international community's premiere diplomatic events. Throughout this first week, while the official negotiating delegation from the United States was around  they were not exactly visible. Certainly, their presence (or lack thereof) hung like a pall in the Pavilion area, where you could palpably experience the oddity of their absence. What's more, early in the week, event maps actually denoted a location for an official US Pavilion
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If food waste were a country...

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Cindy Isenhour  "If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world" - Zitouni Ould Dada, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) It was not too long ago that our efforts to mitigation climate change seemed to focus almost exclusively on direct energy flows (efficiency gains, energy conservation, etc) across a range of seemingly separate sectors (transport, industry, etc).   As an anthropologist deeply interested in the cultural logics that shape our understandings of and responses to environmental issues, I have observed —with great fascination —a significant shift in this thinking over the course of my career.    Yesterday, at a UN Plenary Side Event on the Sustainable Development Goal 12 ("ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns" ), panelists demonstrated a more recent mitigation logic—one that moves beyond a focus on production efficiencies and breaks down sectoral boundaries.   The panel en
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Week Two Delegation_Cindy Isenhour Introduction

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By Cindy Isenhour  The view from one of the apartments.  The conference venue is the blue and green structure Hello everyone! Greetings from Katowice, Poland!  I would like to start with a BIG thank you to Anna McGinn, Will Kochtitzky, Molly Schauffler and David Shauffler for their help securing awesome apartments for our delegation - right next to the conference center (many, many delegates are staying up to an hour away)! So with that, a brief introduction to my focus here at at COP24.  As a University of Maine faculty member with a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Climate Change Institute, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to be here to continue my research focused on the climate impacts of linear production-consumption-disposal systems — AND our efforts to address the associated emissions.   We've long understood and accounted for the emissions associated with energy production, but the attribution of mitigation responsibility bec
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