Another round of climate negotiations in preparations for the Paris Conference of the Parties this December is in the books. Some 190 Parties to the UNFCCC met from June 1 to 11 in Bonn to try to simplify a 90 page negotiating text to a more manageable size with clear options for Ministers to resolve before or at Paris.

The most tangible outcome of 10 days of meetings was a 5 page reduction in the negotiating text, so it is not surprising that many observers have reacted with disappointment to these negotiations. With two negotiating sessions left before Paris, and less than six months, time is clearly running out.

Of course, it would be unfair to measure progress in Bonn solely based on changes to the number of pages of the negotiating text.  The ongoing dialogue on a range of issues from mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, capacity building, transparency, accountability, and legal form can only help to inform upcoming negotiating sessions.

Most important, perhaps, is whether countries demonstrated a genuine effort and notable progress in finding common ground on the key issues that have divided them for so long.  Among these are the adequacy of individual mitigation and finance commitments, the differentiation of  commitments in form and substance among Parties with very different capacity, potential and responsibility, and the legal form of the agreement.  While there were few signs of progress in these areas, the real test will be future negotiating sessions in the coming months.

The following are among the key outstanding process and legal form issues yet to be resolved:

• Will the Paris agreement take the form of a Protocol under the UNFCCC, amendments to the UNFCCC, some other legal agreement under the UNFCCC, the form of non-binding decisions of the Conference of the Parties, or some combination?
• Assuming that there will be a legal agreement in combination with COP decisions, what parts of the current negotiating text will be included in the legal agreement, and what parts will be moved into subordinate (COP) decisions?
• What issues currently included in the negotiating text will be decided in Paris, what issues will be resolved later through COP decisions in future years?
• How will existing institutions set up through COP decisions since 2009, including the Green Climate Fund, the Technology Mechanism, and the Loss and Damage Mechanism, be brought into the new regime?
• Will any of the institutions under the Kyoto Protocol be brought into the new regime, most notably the CDM?
• Where and how will Parties’ commitments in INDCs be reflected in the new agreement?

Key substantive issues

• Will individual commitments expressed in INDCs filed over the coming months come reasonably close to what science and equity demand?  Will they put pressure on countries who have filed inadequate INDCs to revise their commitments before or after Paris?
• Will Parties agree to a meaningful combination of commitment cycles and review of performance and adequacy to offer hope for individual commitments to fill the ambition gap over time?
• Will the ongoing discussion on the pre-2020 ambition gap result in effective measures to reduce the gap and learn from this experience to set in motion an effective process to ensure post-2020 ambition comes into line with scientific predictions and a measure of equity.
• Will the differentiation among Parties extend beyond the nature and ambition of the individual commitments made, and extend to differentiation on issues such as reporting, review, transparency, accountability, and compliance?
• Will issues around the sources and scale of funding along with how it is to be allocated and spent be resolved in Paris?

With this long (partial) list of outstanding issues, what are some key measures of success in Paris?  It seems inevitable that some issues will not be resolved.  It is important to recall that when the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, it took 4 more years to negotiate the rules of implementation.  The regime to be negotiated in Paris is due to come into force in 2020, so while there is time to work out some rules of implementation, it cannot take more than a year or two if Parties are to have sufficient time to implement the agreement. While there are many ways to measure success in Paris, I would suggest the following are among the key elements:

• Will the agreement be universally endorsed, or will there be significant dissent or disapproval, either formally as in Copenhagen, or informally?
• Do Parties come out of Paris committed to meeting their INDCs and to increase their ambition over time
• Does the Paris agreement provide adequate motivation and effective mechanisms for individual and collective increases of ambition over time?  For example, as Parties, subnational governments, or non-state actors want to make commitments to help increase ambition, will the UN climate regime offer effective mechanisms to recognize and support those efforts?

It is trite to say that it is crunch time in the UN climate negotiations, as the regime has been in crises now for almost a decade.  The upcoming negotiating sessions in Bonn in September and October will be critical, as will the effort by the UNFCCC secretariat and co-chairs of the key negotiating group (called the ADP) to streamline and organize the currently unwieldy negotiating text by the middle of July.

For more information about the state of the negotiations, see the UNFCCC website at:  unfccc.int, and the Earth Negotiations Bulletin summary of the June 1-11 Bonn climate negotiations at: http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12638e.html.

To download some of my publications on climate change law & policy, see http://ssrn.com/author=715387.  

 

Meinhard Doelle,

Director, Marine & Environmental Law Institute