Forward and onwards to Paris
The final five days negotiating session (ADP 2.11) prior to COP-21 in Paris closed on Friday 23 October in Bonn with an agreement to forward the revised non-paper to serve as the basis for further negotiations under the ADP in Paris.
This new paper resulted from the week-long intensive and at some times acrimonious discussions that significantly revised the informal papers that had been issued by the co-Chairs of the meeting on 5 October.
The new text now clarifies many of choices that must be made to reach the final agreement in Paris. These include: the areas of mitigation (Article 3); adaptation, and loss and damage (Articles 4 and 5); finance (Article 6); technology development and transfer, and capacity building (Articles 7 and 8); transparency (Article 9); compliance (Article 11); and workstream 2 on increasing pre-2020 ambition. There was also considerable debate on the pre-ambular section of the new agreement including the long-term goal.
From a business perspective, progress has been made towards reaching an ambitious climate agreement in Paris although much work still needs to be done given the slow pace of the discussions. It is hard to believe that in most areas of the future agreement governments have moved past preparing for negotiating and have really started negotiating.
The Canadian and US delegations inserted an explicit reference to business in the draft preambular text for the Paris agreement as the last intervention before ADP Contact group was shut down. The section on mitigation now clarifies the market provisions. It now makes clear that countries can cooperate on markets with proper accounting of transfers, and it sets policy to avoid double-counting of emissions reductions. It also creates a sustainable development crediting mechanism.
The meeting concluded with a request to the Secretariat of the process to prepare a technical paper, which would identify closely related paragraphs and duplications within sections, and possible areas for streamlining, without any changes to the content of the text.
COP-21 will start in Paris with a meeting of heads of state (80-120 expected) on Monday 30 November. This will be followed by a week's intensive negotiations on the text prepared last week in Bonn prior to the Ministers arriving on Monday 7 December to complete the negotiations. It is expected the new agreement will be concluded on Wednesday 9 December and finalised on Friday 11 December.
©Photograph courtesy of IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin