What is at stake at the climate summit that has just started in Germany

This Monday, June 17, a new meeting began in the city of Bonn. The 196 delegations will have to define crucial issues to face climate change that have always generated discord.

Bonn – the German city that saw the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven almost 250 years ago – is dressed up in climate change. For two weeks, there meet, starting this Monday, June 17, the negotiators of the 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to continue negotiating the fine print of the Paris Agreement. It is a meeting that will continue in Costa Rica between October 8 and 10, and will conclude in December at the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) in Chile.

What is being discussed? First, what was left pending from the rules of implementation of the Paris Agreement. At the COP24 that took place last December in Katowice, Poland, the fine print of the Parisian text was agreed, but one point remained unresolved: the future of carbon markets (Article 6). Its definition must be concretized at the end of COP25.

What is at stake here is the integrity of compensation. That is, who claims compensation? How is it governed? What is the “gold standard” that countries should adopt? An important part of the discussion has to do with whether credits from the Kyoto Protocol era will be transferred to that of the Paris Agreement, in which case countries could use pre-2020 savings to account for targets set for 2025/2030, rather than simply depositing additional savings and refusing to accelerate action.

So far, Brazil was the main “blocker” on this front. At COP24 he demonstrated his dissatisfaction with the proposed rules and, as LatinClima learned, he would not have changed his position in the face of the current meeting. All eyes will be on your delegates in these weeks.

In addition to Article 6, there are expectations around the loss and damage mechanism. Will its financing be one of the topics to be discussed at COP25? That is the answer that must be given in Bonn. The most vulnerable countries are pushing this agenda, without much success so far. Given the heavy blows that the climate crisis places on the developing world, the pressure to address how vulnerable countries can financially cope with the impacts is on the rise.

“While developed countries are busy safeguarding their countries in financial terms against the climate crisis, developing countries are fighting for survival,” harjeet Singh of ActionAid International’s Global Climate Change Lead described it on the opening day of the German conference.

Transversal to the discussion, which also includes the start of talks on the implementation of the Paris Agreement, is the ambition that countries are willing to demonstrate when it comes to combating the climate crisis. An increase in targets in nationally determined climate action plans (NDCs) is the order of the day.

With the current NDCs, a scenario would be reached in which the average planetary temperature increases more than 3°C above pre-industrial levels. To bring that projection to the levels imposed by the Paris Agreement and recommended by scientific consensus (1.5°C, in no case more than 2°C), something must change. According to the United Nations, nearly 80 countries have already demonstrated intentions to strengthen their goals for next year: perhaps Bonn will be the scenario they choose to make this aspiration public.

“We need ambition, ambition, ambition,” said Yamide Dagnet, director of the Climate Program World Resources Institute. “Bonn should be the basis for greater ambition.”

Towards the end of this meeting, a definition of what will host COP26 in 2020 is expected. Milan (Italy) and London (Great Britain) are the favourite candidates.

Source: The Spectator