<< 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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Organised by CARE International (Sven Harmeling), Center for International Environmental Law – CIEL (Sebastian Duyck), Women’s Environment and Development Organization – WEDO (Bridget Burns)

The Guaranteeing Rights & Gender Equality side event, organized by CARE International, invited a panel of four speakers to debate about human rights as well as gender implications and action strategies for including these priorities within the achievement of Paris goals.

The first to introduce her perspective on the issue was Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji. She saw potential in relying on increasing transparency and accountability to track progress towards equity. Communications, as an essential part for reporting on indices of transformation, were proposed by her.

“With all these strategies, the process would also have to placed in the wider context of a country’s culture and tradition, to understand deviations among nations.”
– Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji

She rounded off her speech by highlighting current problems, such as work of women that is not accounted for, the underlying systemic injustice, and the excessive and extractive production and consumption as major causes of inequality. She concluded with: “Nothing about us, without us.”

Her speech was followed by that of Sebastian Duych from the Center for International Environmental Law, who shifted the focus to the human rights legal perspective. The preamble of the Paris Agreement, he pointed out, can be seen as a very inspiring underlying message. Therefore, he pleaded to ensure that the spirit of the preamble should serve to influence all enforcement mechanisms when discussed during the negotiations and not just the technicalities.

Duych likewise urged states to inform about their status quo on equity at the community level. As a concluding remark, he stressed that only with an advancement of obligations toward including concrete measures to ensure human rights could real progress be expected.

After him, Bridget Burns from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization took the microphone and elaborated on the status of gender and the Paris Agreement. She proposed that gender should not only include women, but also all other sexes. With that she also stressed the recession of development in engagement of women in delegations and the disparity between policy and practice.

Five main claims were brought forward by Burns:
1. Gender responsive climate policy
2. More sex and gender disaggregated data and analysis
3. Meet goal of gender balance
4. 100% gender-responsive climate finance
5. Financing the gender action plan.

She underpinned her speech with the statement : “No gender equality on a dead planet.”

Lastly, “CARE International” closed off the session with a perspective on agriculture and women’s roles, which is not treated with adequate recognition at present. Land ownership and extreme events are striking the most vulnerable the hardest.

All in all, the side event was very helpful in filtering concrete actions and procedures out of the Paris Agreement. Besides the will to do something about inequalities in the world, all speakers demanded increasing action and a shift in focus on concrete plans. The “Gender Action Plan” can only be a first step in the right direction.

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