COP24 Ceremonial Opening: Old themes and new twists

Post by: Anna McGinn

While COP opened one day earlier than usual this year (on Sunday, December 2), the ceremonial opening still occurred yesterday morning, Monday December 3.

The opening always features a mixture of high-level speeches and presentations from the host country. This year, a Polish rock band with a lead accordion player opened the event. The President of COP24 noted that the music certainly set an upbeat tempo for the conference.

Today’s speeches came from outgoing COP23 President Frank Bainimarama—Prime Minister of Fiji, Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, the World Bank’s Kristalina Georgieva, and a number of Polish leaders including the President of Poland, to name a few.

I could not help but notice an interesting mixture of old themes and new twists to these speeches which are intended to set the tone for the duration of the negotiations.

Old themes:

Common, but differentiated responsibility was revisited by the President of Poland. While this principle is not as central to the Paris Agreement as it was to the Kyoto Protocol, countries continue to make clear that CBDR is a central tenant of the UNFCCC.

Calls to listen to the science have been a central theme of these opening statements since I started following the COPs in 2011, and it was front and center here today. Given the recent IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C, the rhetoric on science-informed decision making was even more stark. Quotes from the report are flying around this conference center from the opening ceremony to the pavilions and side events.

Leaders also focused on climate finance—how are countries going to pay for the climate mitigation and adaptation needed to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (their greenhouse gas reduction targets set under the Paris Agreement) and their adaptation requirements? This was a topic broached by most of the speakers, and one speaker actually had a partial response. Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank, announced that the World Bank was going to double the finance it puts towards climate change, of which half must be for adaptation. Further, every single World Bank funded project, no matter what specific source of funding, must consider climate change in its planning and implementation. For more on this announcement, check out this press release.  

As usual, the speakers also called for increased ambition. They highlighted, as the 2018 Emissions Gap Report states, the world will not reach the 1.5°C or 2°C target without deep cuts in emissions beyond what is stated in the current Nationally Determined Contributions.

In addition to these common refrained, the speeches also brought to the forefront a few newer concepts.

New twists:

Sir David Attenborough, who also spoke at the ceremonial opening, announced a new initiative called the People’s Seat. This is a new way that the UNFCCC has agreed to engage with people from around the world via virtual meetings and conversations, mainly via Twitter. The idea it to provide a platform for decision makers to hear directly from the people their decisions will impact. This is a small, but meaningful step forward for giving more voice to everyday people in this United Nations process.

The Polish government has also introduced a major theme they are calling “the just transition”. While I’m sure it has been talked about, the just transition has never been a central theme at previous COPs. What does Poland mean by a just transition? Experts at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) describe it like this, “We often talk about low carbon transitions as if there were no downsides. That’s because, for the most part, the outcomes from a greener economy are positive – cleaner air, less climate damage. Who wouldn’t want those things? But for some people, like fossil fuel workers, there are some serious downsides, such as losing your job. The concept of a just transition is about ensuring we don’t lose sight of those harmful impacts, and we take care to minimize them.” Using this framing, Poland is putting their dependence on coal energy and jobs at the forefront of the conversation (unlike past hosts that have, perhaps, worked to elude this conversation). We will be following how this just transition rhetoric continues throughout COP24.

As the week continues, we will be looking to see how the tone set during the ceremonial opening supports the negotiations in moving forward.