At the negotiating table
By: Anna McGinn
Each year, the negotiations are carried out under the leadership of the COP Presidency which means that they always take a slightly different form. This year, countries (called parties under the UNFCCC) have tasked themselves with finishing the implementation plan for the Paris Agreement called the Paris rulebook. Often, the parties can push decisions to future meetings when they don’t have consensus, but, this time, almost all decisions really need to be finalized here in Katowice.
With this challenge in front of them, the negotiations have looked something like this:
Last week, parties met under the three main bodies- the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA), the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) in informal consultations on specific topics. These topics range from agriculture and Nationally Determined Contributions (country pledges on mitigation) to loss & damage and how to increase ambition.
After a week of negotiations, on Saturday all three of these groups held their closing plenary sessions. One of the major issues brought into the plenary from the Research and Systematic Observation SBSTA group was that some countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the US, only want to “note” the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C while almost all other countries would like to “welcome” the report as it is essential to the work of the UNFCCC parties (see Will’s post for more information on this).
Notably, the APA was also “gaveled out of existence” during its closing plenary, as stated by one of the former APA Co-Chairs. She explained at a briefing for observers that the APA has achieved its mandate and the co-chairs have turned in their final report. So, as observers, we do not yet know what the next body will look like for implementing the Paris rulebook. Stay tuned.
Next, the decisions that could not be concluded by the bodies during the first week and were not resolved in the closing plenaries were forwarded to the COP Presidency. The Polish Presidency released a plan of work for the coming week which had kicked off with Presidency consultations on thematic issues.
While most of these are closed to observers, Jamie and I did have a chance to sit in on a portion of the Presidency’s consultation on adaptation today where the delegates have been sitting in the same room for 4 hours and counting (the room is booked until 11pm tonight!). They are painstakingly going through each line of not-yet-agreed text on all issues related to adaptation. The setting is less formal than last week with the co-facilitators calling delegates by their names rather than their countries, and delegates walking around the room to have chats with others to come to shared positions. It seems like they are really rolling up their sleeves.
But, at the same time, I am still observing that a lot is not being agreed upon, so what happens next? The language that is still not resolved will be forwarded to the ministerial level at the end of the day on Tuesday. It is then the ministers' responsibility to move the text forward as the ministers theoretically have the decision-making power to agree to changes in text more than the technical negotiations.
This poses an interesting challenge for the end of the negotiations. Yesterday, Sue Biniaz, the former principal legal adviser on the climate negotiations for the United States, shared that the technical nature of these negotiations makes it so that no single person can understand every element of these texts in details. This is largely in contrast to the Paris Agreement negotiations that were at a much more conceptual, abstract level. She explained that in the lead up to Paris, it was pretty easy to brief your ministers or secretaries on the text and bring them up to speed. Here, this is almost an impossible task. As a result, she suggests that for the ministerial efforts to see any level of success, there will need to be innovative forms of negotiations where the technical crews hold the hands of the ministers through the duration of this week.
The level of ambition of the Paris rulebook hangs in the balance.
Each year, the negotiations are carried out under the leadership of the COP Presidency which means that they always take a slightly different form. This year, countries (called parties under the UNFCCC) have tasked themselves with finishing the implementation plan for the Paris Agreement called the Paris rulebook. Often, the parties can push decisions to future meetings when they don’t have consensus, but, this time, almost all decisions really need to be finalized here in Katowice.
With this challenge in front of them, the negotiations have looked something like this:
Last week, parties met under the three main bodies- the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA), the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) in informal consultations on specific topics. These topics range from agriculture and Nationally Determined Contributions (country pledges on mitigation) to loss & damage and how to increase ambition.
After a week of negotiations, on Saturday all three of these groups held their closing plenary sessions. One of the major issues brought into the plenary from the Research and Systematic Observation SBSTA group was that some countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the US, only want to “note” the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C while almost all other countries would like to “welcome” the report as it is essential to the work of the UNFCCC parties (see Will’s post for more information on this).
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| Negotiating session at COP24 |
Next, the decisions that could not be concluded by the bodies during the first week and were not resolved in the closing plenaries were forwarded to the COP Presidency. The Polish Presidency released a plan of work for the coming week which had kicked off with Presidency consultations on thematic issues.
While most of these are closed to observers, Jamie and I did have a chance to sit in on a portion of the Presidency’s consultation on adaptation today where the delegates have been sitting in the same room for 4 hours and counting (the room is booked until 11pm tonight!). They are painstakingly going through each line of not-yet-agreed text on all issues related to adaptation. The setting is less formal than last week with the co-facilitators calling delegates by their names rather than their countries, and delegates walking around the room to have chats with others to come to shared positions. It seems like they are really rolling up their sleeves.
But, at the same time, I am still observing that a lot is not being agreed upon, so what happens next? The language that is still not resolved will be forwarded to the ministerial level at the end of the day on Tuesday. It is then the ministers' responsibility to move the text forward as the ministers theoretically have the decision-making power to agree to changes in text more than the technical negotiations.
This poses an interesting challenge for the end of the negotiations. Yesterday, Sue Biniaz, the former principal legal adviser on the climate negotiations for the United States, shared that the technical nature of these negotiations makes it so that no single person can understand every element of these texts in details. This is largely in contrast to the Paris Agreement negotiations that were at a much more conceptual, abstract level. She explained that in the lead up to Paris, it was pretty easy to brief your ministers or secretaries on the text and bring them up to speed. Here, this is almost an impossible task. As a result, she suggests that for the ministerial efforts to see any level of success, there will need to be innovative forms of negotiations where the technical crews hold the hands of the ministers through the duration of this week.
The level of ambition of the Paris rulebook hangs in the balance.
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