What stocktake are we talking about? The confusing language of the COP

The stocktake of week one, led by the Fijian Presidency

By: Will Kochtitzky

The COP is confusing. Especially when you have a stocktake of the stocktake and informal informals. Let me explain.

On Saturday, the Fijian presidency took a stocktake of the stocktake. The second stocktake in that sentence refers to the Global Stocktake (GST), which is being done to measure progress in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The key part of the Paris Agreement is that all countries submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and then meet every 5 or 10 years (this is being negotiated as you read this) to see how well everyone is doing in reducing emissions and pledging more cuts (or less). The idea behind the GST is for parties to meet and ratchet up ambition, that is to say, we want a mechanism to increase climate action in the future by all parties, and this is the way they have negotiated to do that.
By having a stocktake of the stocktake, the Fijian presidency wants to see how things went during week one. Week one was busy, but some countries complained they were not productive enough. In the first intervention once the president opened the discussion, the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), represented by Switzerland, complained that they were making slow progress and feared that not enough had been accomplished. Ecuador representing G77 and China followed the EIG by calling for more financing to developing countries for climate adaptation and mitigation. While week one was full of negotiations, there remains large pieces of the puzzle to be solved. This stocktake of the the stocktake served as a forum for all countries to share their opinion of week one, and you can imagine that there are about as many opinions as there are countries. Needless to say, week two will also be full of exciting action.
This week the foreign ministers and heads of state arrive. While the US contingency is notably lacking a recognizable high-level representative at this meeting, more political appointees from Washington are expected to descend on Bonn in the coming days. It is will be interesting to watch how these negotiations continue. We do expect a strong showing from other countries including Angela Merkel of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France, among many other leaders around the world.

On the informal informals. The idea behind informal consultations is that parties get together to negotiate various texts. Frequently, as observers, we are able to watch these negotiations and be in the room. However, sometimes countries ask to have informal informals. This means that no observers are allowed in the conversation and parties want the chance to hash out their grievances without observers being able to report on it. I saw this process work first hand this week as parties entered into informal informals to finalize text related to the Informal Consultations on Research and Systematic Observations. When they emerged from these conversations, the text was nearly complete and they quickly agreed on all the completed paragraphs. This is quite frustrating as an observer because you don’t get to see the process happen. The most important thing about being at the COP is getting to see who says what and different interests parties hold in the negotiations. Parties will frequently ask colleagues to explain their position and then you get to see why the country holds their beliefs. Frequently this is for legal reasons, but occasionally you get a glimpse into the countries politics. For example, this week the US was asked to explain some of their positions and they simply said that they were waiting on an answer from Washington. We don’t know who they were waiting for in Washington, but clearly there are communications between the group here and those still in D.C. It will be interesting to watch how the tone shifts this week from the US as more political appointees arrive in Bonn.


Today starts the next exciting week of COP23, we look forward to following the negotiations today and all week! Stay tuned for more all week from our UMaine delegation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ambition at COP23

Image
Posted by: Anna McGinn At this COP, we are talking a lot about ambition.  In Will’s most recent post , he explains the Global Stocktake which is one major element of how countries plan to institutionalize and then operationalize increasing ambition on climate action. The World Resources Institute worked with the UNFCCC to create "the arc of ambition" (image below) to chart the path towards net-zero emissions and climate resilience by 2050. You can see the global stocktakes prominently featured within this arc.  So, this arc looks like the UNFCCC and its parties have everything under control, right? So, why is there so much to talk about on ambition here at COP23 outside of this planning for the global stocktake?  To understand this, we have to go back to 2015 when the countries were negotiating the Paris Agreement. Since they did not know when the Agreement would enter into force during the negotiations (because they agreed that it would enter
Read more

The United States at COP23: What to expect?

Image
US Center at COP22 Marrakech in 2016 featuring one of NASA's climate modeling education tools Posted by: Anna McGinn It has often been complicated to be a US citizen at the UN Climate Change Conferences. The US is responsible for vast historic emissions of greenhouse gases and continues to be one of the leading emitters in the world . Compounding this, the US has not always been interested in stepping up as a leader to curb emissions or chart a new path forward for development. For example, the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol which is the first agreement established under this UN climate framework to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Jonathan Purshing, long time US climate negotiator, introduces Sec. John Kerry at COP22 in 2016 Under former President Obama, the US did have some more commendable moments especially when it comes to the formation and passage of the Paris Agreement which is the most recent effort to set global steps toward climate change miti
Read more

Earth Science Feeding the COP

Image
Posted by: Will Kochtitzky How do we monitor changes to earth? How do we measure the essential climate variables (ECV) to inform decision making? How do we quantify climate change? At the COP, all these questions and more are asked within in the realm of “Research and Systematic Observation”. Because systematic observations play a key role in the UNFCCC processes there are defined mechanisms for parties (countries) to receive information from organizations working to make earth observations, such as the European Space Agency, World Meteorological Organization, among others. These groups are vital in assessing the state of the planet and relaying scientific information to the parties. In these negotiations, the parties also request information from scientific bodies. Many people may not consider these conversations important, as they are not dealing with climate policy and are not impacting global carbon emissions. In fact, these negotiations are the ground work
Read more