<< Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.>>
– Henry Puna

In the early morning hours of the 18^th November 2017, the climate change COP 23 in Bonn came to an end after two weeks of negotiations, discussions and debates. The conference didn’t result in tremendous progress but met the overall expectations. Progress in implementing the Paris Agreement was achieved and next steps towards the coal phase-out were undertaken. Bonn was a necessary step on the way to Katowice next year where the members of the parties will come together again.

One main outcome of COP 23 consists of the further elaboration of the Paris Agreement’s Rule Book. Clear and consistent standards were needed regarding measuring and reporting CO₂ emissions as well as advances in climate protection on the national level within all participating nations. Aiming for the prevention or at least for slowing down the global heating, a draft of around 200 pages was presented. This document will be finalized and adopted at COP 24.

Despite the disappointing German position concerning the withdrawal from coal use, the initiation of the global “Powering Past Coal Alliance” was a great step towards a coal free future. Under leadership of Canada and the UK, more than two dozen countries, provinces, states and cities agreed on the phasing-out of the climate killer within the next decades. Germany might follow in 2018. Its role as a financial supporter of climate protection is very important but others took over political leadership.

Contrasting Americas official position, positive signals came from other US representatives including civil society members, companies, states and cities: “We are still in!” – a clear message and support to keep the spirit of Paris alive in Bonn.

Further achievements are the adoption of the Gender Action Plan, the development of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform and the launch of the Ocean Pathway Partnership. In order to promote and stimulate the process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue, the Talanoa Dialogue was initiated. This facilitative exchange encourages action in climate mitigation by bringing together science, industry and the civil society.

Apart from the negotiation processes in the Bula (Fijian for “hello”) Zone, the organization of the climate conference in Bonn in two zones, also provided room and opportunities for showcasing projects and examples of implementation. Countries, industry and civil society presented a wide spectrum of climate action solutions in hundreds of events in the Bonn Zone.

The COP 23 was characterized by the shared general consensus to get active in climate policy. That is a strong signal but a lot of work remains until more groundbreaking decisions will have to be made in Poland next year. From our perspective as scientists, the statement of His Excellency Mr. Henry Puna, Prime Minister of Cook Islands, should provide motivation and be seen as a mandate: “Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.”

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“I hear no objections, it is so decided.”

As observer in the Bula zone, this sentence was the most heard during the first days of the 23^rd Conference of the Parties . Most meetings in the first days of the COP23 still dealt with organizational matters, such as agreeing on the structure of following meetings. The interventions by parties appeared rather repetitive to me, which is probably caused by the diplomatic character of the sessions. Almost everybody started their comments by thanking Fiji and Germany for hosting this year´s COP and stressing out how much they appreciate the previous work and look forward to fruitful discussions with tangible outcomes.

The negotiations in the Bula zone are carried out in many parallel meetings of the following working groups/ bodies:

• Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA),
• Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI),
• Conference of the Parties (COP),
• Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA),
• Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP),
• Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA)

Each group has a long list of agenda items that they work on during the two weeks in Bonn. For more detailed information on what the COP23 is all about, read this GCE post. Due to the vast number of parallel meetings and increasing restrictions for observer presence in sessions, it was impossible for us four observers from the Global Change Ecology programme to get a full overview of what´s going on each day in the negotiations at Bula zone. Luckily, there are many media teams, climate activists and other NGOs who provide very helpful daily briefings, such as the Climate Tracker.

I mainly attended informal consultations of the SBSTA, e.g. on systematic observation and research, and the big COP plenary meetings. In the course of the first week, I could observe how the negotiations went from structural issues to more technical, content-based discussions. Some of the bodies already produced informal notes and draft texts which ultimately will lead to the creation of a rulebook for the
implementation of the Paris Agreement.

According to the big COP stock-taking plenary on Saturday and an overview article by Climate Tracker, the main points being discussed in the different bodies in the first week of COP23 have been:

Pre-2020 actions
The Paris Agreement commitments only begin in 2020. However, as the COP president Frank Bainimarama says: “We must not waste time”. For this reason, especially developing countries, demanded pre-2020 actions to already get started with mitigation activities to combat climate change and have a chance at limiting global warming to below 1.5°C in comparison to pre-industrial levels. This is very crucial for island states, for example in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, so far the pre-2020 ambitions have not been assigned to any working group or official agenda item of this year´s COP.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
One of the main points being discussed in this context is how and when the reporting and updating of the NDCs should take place. Developing countries and developed countries might face differentiated processes here.

Loss and Damage
As nicely explained by Climate Tracker: “loss and damage is a concept where rich countries, who have historical responsibility for climate change, are asked to be liable to developing countries, who are already facing climate change impacts.” Unfortunately, negotiations on this topic ended in controversial discussions when some developed countries questioned the scientific evidence necessary to correlate extreme weather events/natural disasters with climate change.

Finance
One of the crucial issues for the implementation of the Paris Agreement is the finance of all required measures, e.g. in form of an Adaptation Fund which can help the developing countries to tackle climate change impacts.

Talanoa dialogue
Also known as Facilitative dialogue, the Talanoa dialogue has been introduced by the Fijian COP presidency to have inclusive, participatory and transparent conversations in which people listen to each other and respect the other one´s perspective. It is supposed to be held in 2018.

Other important topics covered in the meetings were the reporting guidelines/ implementation for adaptation and mitigation, the global stock-take, a gender action plan and features, such as transparency, equity, capacity building and technology transfer.

The parties still have a lot of work ahead and with ministers arriving in the second week of COP23, one can hope that negotiations progress faster and that the delegates agree on how to implement the different components of the Paris Agreement.

I feel honored to be given the unique opportunity to observe the negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference 2017. I felt overwhelmed by the number of events taking place at the same time and also by the engagement and interest that NGOs demonstrated at Bonn zone and within negotiations.

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Parallel to informal consultations of the meetings and protocol bodies of the convention where we had limited access, the workshop for the facilitative sharing of views (FSV) under the international consultation and analysis (ICA) process for developing country Parties was organized under the Subsidiary Body of Implementation (SBI) at this 47th session in room Genf of the Bula zone.

The objective of this FSV was to invite non-Annex I Parties that have submitted their Biennial Update Report (BUR) and have a final summary report by 8 September 2017 to share their experiences, lessons learned, success and challenges during the preparation and the submission of their BURs in order to strengthen the process and encourage more and more non-annex I parties to improve and submit their report. Till that date, five countries namely Armenia, Ecuador, Georgia, Jamaica and Serbia had already submitted their BURs. These 5 non-annex I parties had already finalized the first step of the ICA process, the technical analysis of their first biennial update report (BUR) conducted by a team of technical experts.

After a short clip showing the benefits of participating in the ICA process by developing countries, each representative of those 5 countries were invited to present their national circumstances, the GHG inventories and mitigation actions developed, the projections of scenarios to assess the forecasted impacts of mitigation actions till 2030, to exchange in a very positive manner their experiences in the implementation of the Measuring Reporting and Verification (MRV) framework, to showcase their efforts done at the national level to put such framework in place, and to present the challenges, their needs on how to improve domestic MRV, opportunities and support received for mitigation of climate change.

Amongst the obstacles presented by those countries, the lack of detailed information, the lack of capacities, financial resources and technologies were the main factors encountered during the preparation of their BURs. They expressed their needs in term of capacity building in order to strengthen the BUR preparation and mitigation actions and to increase the accuracy and quality of their domestic MRV framework.

At the end, several questions were posed by other parties in order to improve the preparation of their own BUR. Those questions are summarized below.

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“Negotiations are important, but action is more important” – Salaheddine Mezouar, COP22 President

The first week of the conference was marked by the presence of several African countries which share together the urgent need of implementing the Paris Agreement. Besides participating individually to main plenary meetings and informal consultations during meetings of the convention and protocol bodies on specific agenda item of the Paris agreement, the African Group organized several closed meetings at least twice a day in order to discuss, prepare and clarify the position, visions and expectations of African countries during COP 23. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to those closed meetings. As a result, the point of view expressed here is based on what we have heard and seen during plenaries as well as informal discussion with countries’ representatives.

Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change
I think we heard this sentence or something similar at every single speech of African negotiators during plenary meetings, and it’s not false. From coastal locations in the West, tropical ecosystems in the center, small islands in the Indian Ocean to arid and semi-arid regions in the North and South, every single country feels the adverse effects of climate change. Agriculture is the main sector impacted by climate change, due to the high reliance on precipitation for rain-fed agriculture which accounts for nearly 95% of farmed land in Africa. This high vulnerability is also linked to poverty which induces low adaptive capacities and mitigation actions across the continent.

A lot of progress is made at the national level
In response of the adverse effects of climate change, a lot of efforts is put in place across the continent to cope with climate change both at the national and international level. During plenaries and side-events, several African countries shared their efforts made. Amongst the 169 Parties who already ratified the Paris Agreement, 52 are from Africa. This denotes their commitment and their need to implement the Paris Agreement which entered into force in November 2016. In addition to that, of the 8000 climate and sustainable development projects registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), more than 45% are from African countries said Frank Volke, Chair of the CDM executive board during the 2nd meeting of the ad hoc group responsible for the implementation of the Paris agreement (APA) when presenting the annual report of their activities on Tuesday 7 November.

More than 45% of the 8000 climate and sustainable development profects are from African countries.

However, out the 52 Africans countries who ratified the Paris Agreement, only 5 already submitted their first Biennial Update Report (BUR), 2 countries submitted the second one and the rest are actively working on their own. This shows the difficulties and the challenges for African countries even if they share the same enthusiasm in the fight against climate change. At the national level, efforts are being made to improve GHG inventories and to bring together several actors, like the Climate Change Forum presented by the representative of Uganda during the first Presidency’s Open Dialogue on Wednesday, and which brings together government,  NGOs, members of the civil society, youths, local communities to discuss and find common solutions. In addition to that, several countries have already identified keys sectors focusing on adaptation and mitigation actions.

Need for collective efforts – a strong signal sent by the German Government

“Limiting greenhouse gas emissions is a central challenge for the future. Adaptation measures will be required in many countries…adaptation to climate change is an equally important second pillar of the Paris Agreement. Germany has been very committed in this area in the past and will remain so in future… we will once again support the Adaptation Fund this year with an additional 50 million euros” – Dr. Barbara Hendricks, German Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety

This was perceived as a strong and powerful signal sent by the German government to other developed countries to come together and assist developing countries in the fight against climate change. Across the continent, challenges are diverse and during plenaries, African representatives have expressed their difficulties and needs in term of capacity building, technology transfer, the adaptation fund, additional funds for losses and damages as well as funds for medication. This contribution from Germany will help to move forward and reach the annual amount of $100 billion promised for 2020 by developed countries towards developing ones. Since we are all in the same canoe, several collective efforts need to be implemented to meet this goal before 2020.This means:

 “We must act in solidarity because the story will not hold back who was stronger or weaker. Negotiations are important, but action is more important” – Salaheddine Mezouar, COP22 President

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The “Fossil of the Day” Awards exist since 1999 and are an initiative of the Climate Action Network (CAN) to ironically honor those parties, countries or organisations which act in a bad manner, hindering the progress of the negotiations at COP and counteracting the common will to achieve the climate target set in the Paris Agreement. Aiming for the attention of delegates and directly pointing fingers at the “bad ones”, the Award “winner” of every conference day is announced at 6 pm in the Bula zone in the foyer of the
World Conference Center.

“To those who are the best at being the worst, to those who do the most to do the least”

In the first week of the COP23 the following bodies have been awarded with the ironic “Fossil of the Day” price:

Day 1:

• United States “We are still in” movement as exceptional non-ironic “Ray of the Day” for giving hope for the continuation of joint climate action

Day 2:

• Australia for approving and funding fossil fuel mines which threaten habitats, such as the Great Barrier Reef, and increase emissions
• Poland for trying to convert the EU Emissions Trading Scheme into a coal power subsidy scheme instead of phasing out from fossil fuels

Day 3:

• France for postponing their nuclear energy phase down target (to reduce nuclear energy in the national energy mix from 75% to 50% by 2020)

Day 4:

• Developed Countries for refusing to include pre-2020 actions into the COP23 agenda
• Japan for promoting nuclear and coal technologies in developing countries within the Japan-United States Strategic Energy Partnership
• Kuwait for voting to exclude observers from a session on Loss and Damage within the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI)

Day 5:

• International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for negotiating on carbon offsets and biofuels for this sector in private

Day 6:

• Australia, Canada, European Union and United States for forgetting about the solidarity principle when it comes to loss and damage finance

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The meeting of the convention and protocol bodies , namely the Conference of the Parties (COP), Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP); Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA); Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI); Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA); Subsidiary Bodies (SB) and the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) created to prepare the entry into force of the Paris agreement is still going. Unfortunately, GCE observers were not allowed to attend those meeting today.

However, the Bula zone was specially characterized today by the presence of several activists protesting against coal mines and asking for climate justice. We could hear slogans such as:

Leave the coal in the hole!
Leave the coal in the hole!
Leave the oil in the soil!
Leave the oil in the soil!
Clean money for the south!
Kept dirty money out!

Just for a short recap, coal is one of the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases emissions and in some countries of the world, the main primary energy source. In the US approximately 67 percent of the electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, mostly coal and natural gas. Of course, holding temperature increase to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels as adopted in the Paris agreement requires a rapid decarbonisation of the global power sector.

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“It’s the first Presidency Open Dialogue at the COP. It’s not a side event…today, we will not negotiate, we will talk to each other and we will listen to each other…. there would be good experiences to share. It’s about contributing to solutions.”
– COP 23 President Frank Bainimarama

Today, COP23 President Frank Bainimarama encouraged an open and honest dialogue during the opening of the first-ever Presidency’s Open Dialog at the COP.  Following his welcoming remarks, the secretary of the UNFCCC, Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa, highlighted and expressed appreciation of this first dialogue, because we “all share the same emergency of  implementing the Paris agreement” and, consequently, such dialogue “is crucial to advancing the discussion….it requires the participation of everyone.” She reaffirmed the determination of the UNFCCC secretariat to support such dialogue in the hope that all parties will propose solutions that can feed our common agenda.

“We all share the same emergency of  implementing the Paris agreement.” – UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa

The Presidency’s Open Dialogue, which offers a unique opportunity for parties and NGO constituencies to directly interact with each other on concrete issues of the negotiation process, was extensively discussed in May 2017 at the forty-sixth session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), where it was in FCCC/SBI/2017/7  §119 that “(…) any outcomes of such a dialogue should have persuasive value only, respecting the Party-driven nature of the UNFCCC process; (…).”

This first Presidency’s Open Dialog was held under the Chatham House Rule, meaning that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The first part of the dialogue focusing on NDC (nationally-determined contributions) enhancement and implementation, was guided by three main questions:

1) How can Parties and non-Party stakeholders (NPS) collaborate with each other on enhancing and implementing NDCs?
2) How can NDCs be improved?
3) How can NPS best actively contribute and feed into the Talanoa dialogue in 2018 both directly and indirectly?

For around one hour, the floor was given to Parties and non-Party stakeholders to tell their national stories and give their point of view concerning the aforementioned questions.

Following this roundtable discussion (and in the spirit of the Chatham House Rule) the recommendations of the Parties and NPS were given. Listed below are a few critical points:

1) Human rights and Gender as a key priority in the NDCs
2) Better development of the financial aspects of the NDCs
3) Revised mitigation targets as a result of the Talanoa Dialogue in 2018
4) More collaboration among Parties, technology transfer, education, and capacity building
5) Inclusion of the traditional and local knowledge in the dialogue

Lastly, Parties and NPS expressed their desire to have such open, fair,  equitable, creative, and constructive dialogue on a regular basis every year, delivering the outcome in the form of a press release or communication.

In the second part of this Dialogue, the focus was on enhancing admitted observer access to and participation in formal meetings. During roundtable discussion, Parties and NPS proposed possible solutions to further increase opportunities for admitted observer organizations to make interventions in plenaries.

Three key attributes: Attendance, discussion, and next year’s dialog.

At the end of the day, three keys attributes were proposed by the Chair of the SBI for a successful dialogue: attendance, discussion and the question of if the future presidency of the COP will hold the dialog next year.

The first Presidency’s Open Dialog ended with a Fijian ceremony during which Kava, a traditional drink, was offered to all participants by the Fijian delegation.

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After yesterday’s touching opening ceremony, which was enriched by performances by children and indigenous Fijian people as well as motivating speeches, the second day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2017 continued with the central agenda: preparing the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

First, some good news: observers are generally welcome in most of the sessions and the Fijian COP presidency seeks an open dialogue with non-parties to the convention, as their contributions will be crucial to achieving the climate target set in the Paris Agreement.

“We are all in the same boat.” – COP president Frank Bainimarama

The statements given during the first two conference days emphasized the urgency of our situation and called out for solidarity as well as effective, efficient, and immediate climate actions.

This year’s natural disasters, like South Asian monsoons or hurricanes in the Caribbean, have demonstrated that humanity is already facing impacts of climate change. In one of the side events, a Fijian woman narrated on how the Pacific small island states are suffering from the consequences of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which they themselves did not cause. For that reason, Frank Bainimarama, the newly elected COP president, stressed that: “We are all in the same boat.”

This metaphor is visualized in the World Conference Center in the form of a Fijian canoe.

“We need to have a collective response to loss and damage, especially for these developing countries.”
– Timor-Leste delegate

In one of the negotiations, the Palestinian delegate underlined this moral attitude by stating: “No one should be left behind”; this sentiment is supported by the least developed countries’ (LDCs) representative.

 “Climate change, if we do not act immediately […], there will be no return.”
– Ambassador Aziz Mekouar

A recently published report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) explains how urgent the demanded joint climate action is. 2017 will be among the three hottest years on record, even though we are no longer witnessing El Niño conditions. The temperatures in January to September were 1.1°C warmer than the 1880-1900 average.

Even more alarming, our recent efforts have not been sufficient. According to a UN Environment report the pledges made in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) only fulfill one-third of the Paris Agreement target and would lead to 2 to 3°C warming in comparison to pre-industrial temperatures. Petteri Taalas from the WMO warns that time is very limited to change our behavior.

I leave the second day at COP23 overwhelmed by the amount of people attending this conference and the common will to combat climate change. I hope that within the upcoming days, the delegates will find consensus on how to implement and finance the ambitious goal that they agreed upon in Paris, 2015.

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In 1992, during the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, a 12 year old girl gave a speech “for all the generation to come,” telling the present leaders:

“ We are your own children.
You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in …
Are we even on your list of priorities? “

Similarly, today’s opening ceremony started with a procession of kids with signs that read: “Save the world”. They performed a song entitled “I am an island”, stressing our connectedness.

The exiting COP president gave the first speech, underlying the cost of not acting and how ambition, solidarity, and action are the principles the COPs are based upon. The priority, he said, are the young people–and history will remember us for what will be able to deliver.

The new COP23 Fijian president was then given the seat, and as is tradition, a kava ceremony was performed and offered to the Minister of Environment, Barbara Hendricks.

As observers, we were not permitted to enter the open ceremony, but we watched it by screen in a room close by. Despite the fact that today’s attendance was lower than expected, the rooms and the halls felt filled with people (with women and men apparently equally represented) from all ethnic groups.

I participated in different press briefings, which bitterly discussed the delusion of the USA’s withdrawal. Despite this, US cities, municipalities and citizens are still acting and supporting the Paris Agreement. The power of change is in all of us.

In the final speech I attended, a young girl, together with other children, filed a lawsuit against Trump to reduce the carbon input, asking:

“… not to leave a mess for young people to clean up.”

She stressed again that the work being done here is for the future generations.

I came out of this first day of meeting motivated to engage more for our planet’s future, both as a “young research” and, maybe even moreso, as a woman.

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