Social and Concrete: opportunities for the upcoming Bonn climate talks to address key questions

Four weeks only after having concluded in Bonn a relatively positive session of negotiations, government representatives and NGOs are returning to the shores of the Rhine for another round of climate talks. During the coming 12 days, the UN climate talks will resume to prepare the ground for the annual climate conference organized next November in Warsaw.

While this session is not expected to deliver many significant decisions on global climate policy, the next two weeks have the potential to playing a pivotal role, turning the positive dynamics of the previous meeting into preparation of concrete decisions to be adopted at the Warsaw conference.

The stakes are high as the agenda of the discussions to kick-in in Bonn covers two fundamental elements that should always be and remain at the core of the UN climate negotiations: the role of humans and communities in international climate policies and concrete opportunities to strengthen global cooperation around mitigation actions.

1. How climate policies relate to the needs and vulnerabilities of communities?
For once, the social implications of global climate policies will be discussed through several tracks of the negotiations to attempt to provide a response to several key questions.

- Can the principle of equity guide the definition of climate politics?
Last month, climate negotiators engaged for the first time in a conversation on how the concept of equity might guide the sharing of the efforts expected to combat climate change. While references to this important concept used to lead to divisive discussions, many negotiators seem now to understand that it could actually provide a useful tool to determine how to compare the actions of different countries. The EU has for instance suggested last week that domestic targets proposed by each nation should be assessed against equity indicators to understand whether they cover the “fair share” of this particular country’s responsibility or if the national target proposed should be raised. The coming two weeks will show whether governments are actually interested in using this principle to foster common understanding and cooperation thinking.

- What is the scale of impacts that we are ready to tolerate?
This negotiation session will also launch a new discussion to review the target for the maximum increase of global temperature increase. The UN Climate Convention only suggests that governments should avoid “dangerous climate change” without much clarification on what this means in practice. Three and a half years ago, the heads of states and of governments identified an increase of global temperatures by two degrees as the “dangerous climate change” that should not be overshot. Scientists have however highlighted that such a threshold would come with tremendous impact on the most vulnerable countries and communities, ocean submerging some low-lying islands states in the Pacific and many African countries facing unprecedented food security challenges. Negotiators thus also agreed in the past that they will review the adequacy of this objective. This review will begin here in Bonn and is expected to lead to a conclusion within the coming two years. In the absence of automatic consequences of this target, this process will not suffice on its own to trigger additional mitigation policies. But the discussions accompanying it might offer an opportunity to discuss the extent of climate impacts that governments are ready to tolerate.

- Can the international community provide support to the most impacted communities?
In 2010, governments accepted the fact that, due to the lack of adequate climate policies, many communities faced already harsh climate impacts against which adaptation policies are no longer capable of offering satisfactory protection. The Cancun Climate Conference thus agreed to establish a global “loss and damage” mechanism to address the consequences of slow onset events (such as raising sea level) and extreme weather events. This year, negotiators are expected to conclude discussions on how to operationalize this mechanism to ensure that it can respond to the pleas of the most impacted communities.

- Will governments be willing to ensure that carbon markets do not threaten the rights of local communities?
Governments have always been extremely divided on the role of carbon markets in international climate policy and there is little chance that this situation changes here in Bonn during the coming days. Some dramatic experiences have shown in the past that - unless being regulated carefully - carbon markets could lead to the development of projects infringing the rights of local community rather than to contribute to sustainable development at the local level. Perhaps countries will be able to find more easily a common ground on the issue of the reform the rules of procedures for the existing UN carbon market. Independent of the discussion on whether carbon markets are appropriate tools for the future climate policy, the UN really needs to ensure immediately than it no longer provides incentives for projects violating the real principles on which the UN was established.

2. How can the international community foster concrete climate mitigation actions?

Considering the alarming gap between the emissions reductions suggested by scientists and the policy actually in place to deliver this emission reduction, governments need to consider concrete opportunities for them to scale up in the short-term policies contributing to reducing emissions. Many reports have already suggested very concrete opportunities to reduce emissions while generating environmental, economic and social co-benefits:

• Scaling up renewable energy and energy efficiency through further international cooperation,
• Targeting climate pollutants so far ignored by the climate talks despite their impact on the atmosphere,
• Engaging all economic sectors in the global climate policy effort, including agriculture, forestry and international transport,
• Reforming fossil fuel subsidies to ensure that tax payers money is not used to actually support polluting industries.

The climate negotiations often seem abstract and completely disconnected from the reality. For once, I would actually argue that there will be many opportunities for negotiations to increase the relevance of the climate talks by both addressing social consequences of climate policies or the lack thereof as well as to discuss concrete opportunities for mitigation actions that could reduce our impacts on the climate system in the coming few years.

Whether countries delegations will seize the opportunity ahead of them remains unknown. The coming few days will be decisive in telling us whether the climate talks can move away from “negotiations as usual” and get more real for once.

For those interested in following the climate talks more closely, we have identified in which body each of these discussions will take place: equity (ADP), review (SBI+SBSTA), loss and damage (SBI), reform of the carbon markets (SBI), concrete actions (ADP).

Photo Credit: americanbackroom.com, rlanvin, A.Currell and UNEP-Grid Arendal