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Leaving Bonn with hope

Michalina Golinczak

The Bonn Climate Change Conference came to an end after eleven days of intensive negotiations, workshops, expert meetings, informal consultations, press briefings and side events.

In the spotlight were the work towards a new global deal as well as pre-2020 action. The new agreement, which will hopefully be signed in 2015 in Paris, has to be universal and ambitious enough to limit the worst impacts of climate change. But since it will not come into force until 2020, we also need to raise short-term ambition and close the growing emissions gap. Talks concerning these two topics will continue in a session this October, before the annual UN climate summit in Lima in December.

To give you a better understanding of what happened during the last two weeks and what happens next on the road to Paris, we talked to representatives of NGOs involved in this process.

Tasneem Essop, WWF

Tasneem Essop, head of the WWF delegation, highlighted the positive outcomes of the conference. She noted that we are leaving Bonn with more clarity on what countries are expected to do and a good basis for further negotiations.

Now the hard work needs to happen,

Tasneem said, looking towards the Ban Ki-moon climate summit in September and the next Bonn session in October.

Progress has been made also in terms of pre-2020 ambition. And results of the talks are strongly linked to what is happening outside of climate talks, she pointed out, presenting the WWF campaign Seize Your Power.

Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists

Alden Meyer, expert on international and US climate change policy from the Union of Concerned Scientists, emphasized the political signals on climate action in recent weeks from, among others, US and China, which gave a positive spirit to the negotiations. But here is the bad news - there is still no clarity about an assessment phase, an evaluation in terms of achieving the 2 centigrades temperature goal and regarding fair national contributions to it.

That still remains to be worked out in Lima, and I think it is going to be a very tough fight.

Just as Tasneem, he noticed some promising development on the short-term track, such as growing interest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, land use, and the role of cities in cutting greenhouse emissions.

Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, Fundación Biosfera

Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, head of the Climate Change Department of Fundación Biosfera in Argentina, told us in a few words about Latin American countries since the next climate summit will be held in Peru with a pre-ministerial meeting in Venezuela. He highlighted their constructive role in the past negotiations.

Enrique also provided us with background information on what is happening in the region right now - from national elections in different countries to catastrophic floods in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. As he said,

This is a clear message from the nature.

A clear message to act.

 

Photo Credit: Luc B via Flickr

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  • Guenier

    The optimism displayed here by the NGOs is admirable. But is it justified? I would
    suggest not.

    The UN has held two major negotiating sessions in Bonn this year, yet at neither was any progress made towards resolving what Alden Meyer (Union of Concerned Scientists) has described as the two “thorniest issues of the negotiations” (http://www.rtcc.org/2014/06/13/lack-of-finance-holding-up-un-talks-say-worlds-poorest/), namely (1) whether the division between developed and developing countries enshrined in the original UN Convention (see below) should apply to the Paris agreement and (2) the deep divide on finance revealed by China’s insistence that a legally binding provision of massive funding from the developed to the developing economies should be a precondition of a Paris deal: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/06/idUKL6N0ON2WS20140606.

    Re the division between developed and developing countries, insufficient attention seems to have been given to the developing countries’ uncompromising
    “draft negotiating text” published last week: http://unfccc.int/files/documentation/submissions_from_parties/adp/application/pdf/adp2-5_submission_by_malaysia_on_behalf_of_the_lmdc_crp.pdf This indicates no progress whatever on the developed/developing division issue - a major cause of the Copenhagen debacle.

    These issues are fundamental and exceptionally tricky; they cannot possibly be
    resolved without detailed and difficult negotiation – “political signals” won’t do it. But when’s that going to happen? A short session in October just before the Lima Conference is unlikely to be enough. And, as for the Conference itself, the experience of previous COPs is not encouraging. Yet they must be settled if a
    “universal and ambitious” agreement is to be signed in 2015 in Paris.

  • Guenier

    Michalina: I’ve just noted that you’re following me on Twitter. Sorry - but I no longer do Twitter. But I hope we’ll be able to discuss the issues I’ve raised on this thread. And/or perhaps you’d be interested in joining the discussion here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/2313902. See especially my most recent comment.