Each day, Fred Heutte, lead volunteer for the Sierra Club’s Federal and International Climate Campaign, is providing updates about the day’s events at COP21, the Paris Climate Conference. I will reprint these in this blog with his permission.
Fred Heutte
SUNDAY, DEC. 6 — While no formal sessions occurred on Sunday, the French presidency was engaged in a constant round of consultations with groups and countries both on the emerging content of the Paris agreement and COP 21 decision and on the process for the rest of the week. Four subgroups set up on Saturday began their meetings:
- Support: means of implementation (finance, technology, capacity building)
- Differentiation, in particular with regard to mitigation, finance, transparency
- Ambition, including long-term goals and periodic review
- Acceleration of pre-2020 Action, Workstream 2 excluding pre-2020 finance
MONDAY, DEC. 7 — The two-day High Level Segment began. This is a regular feature of every annual COP where ministers give 3-minute speeches (many of the texts are available on the UNFCCC web site) while one-on-one and group discussions are happening all around the conference center.
Indigenous people’s flotilla, Sunday, December 6
The French presidency began setting up new subgroups on:
- Adaptation and loss & damage
- Preamble
- Forests
- Cooperative approaches and mechanisms
- Response measures
- Facilitating implementation and compliance
With all negotiating sessions closed and only the daily “stocktake” at 7 p.m. on screens and the webcast, civil society observers including the Sierra Club were very busy finding out what was actually being discussed and the stress points on a wide range of issues. The stocktakes are basically a place to put the best possible face on the state of play and also to see if there are serious objections on process or the substance. So far, with very little actual removal of options, and the strong leadership of the French presidency, there haven’t been any serious objections.
A major development of the day was the re-emergence of a 1.5 degree global warming target alongside the long-established 2 degrees. This is roughly the Sierra Club position (supporting 350 ppm). Quite a few countries including Canada and Australia are indicating openness to 1.5 degrees as at least something to aim for, joining over 100 developing countries that have long supported a 1.5 degree goal.
TUESDAY, DEC. 8 — Work continued throughout the day in closed ministerial meetings. In the evening, COP President Fabius laid out the procedure for the rest of the week:
- An initial draft of the final Paris Agreement and COP decision by 1 pm on Wednesday afternoon. We anticipate the Paris Agreement draft will probably be reduced from 22 pages to around 15.
- The draft will be released for the Paris Committee at 1 p.m. (later moved to 3 p.m.), then a break of several hours to study the new draft. A second Paris Committee meeting will then be held and this is a critical moment because options are now being taken off the table and the final trade-offs among key elements will start to emerge.
Civil society including the Sierra Club pushed hard throughout the day for the package of human rights, gender equality, just transition, rights of indigenous peoples and other elements that will signal that the Paris Agreement is not only an agreement of governments but will also actively include all people.
A new ministerial group met in the evening to discuss these and other elements as part of the Preamble. On the “just transition” language, which the Sierra Club has strongly supported alongside the trade union movement, countries offering support included Brazil, Argentina and Canada. And in a positive step forward, the United States and Norway said they would support just transition not only in the Preamble but in Article 3 (mitigation) — thanks in part to a Twitter campaign by the AFL-CIO, their first ever on climate.
On the substantive issues, we heard report backs from a small group meeting with the French presidency that many parts of the draft Paris Agreement are not strong at the moment.
Some of the problem areas include lack of a specific date for the “long term goal” for emissions reduction, no process for updating nationally determined contributions before 2020, and no adaptation finance before 2020 and vague provisions after that, and a standoff on loss and damage.
The larger questions of how much real “review” the whole Paris Agreement will have, and how much finance developed countries will provide to developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, remain the big crunch issues for the rest of the week.
State of Play Dateline
[x] Sunday 29 ADP pre-plenary
[x] Monday 30 COP opening plenary – Leader Event
[x] Tuesday 1 COP/CMP joint plenary, SBI and SBSTA opening plenaries,
start of ADP contact group and spinoffs
[x] Wednesday 2 – Spin-Off Groups, ADP stocktaking
[x] Thursday 3 – Spin-Off Groups, ADP stocktaking
[x] Friday 4 – revised ADP text 8 am
[x] Saturday 5 closing ADP plenary, COP plenary
[x] Sunday 6 [COP 21 closed, informal consultations]
[x] Monday 7 High Level Segment, Paris Committee
[x] Tuesday 8 High Level Segment, Paris Committee
[ ] Wednesday 9, Paris Committee
[ ] Thursday 10
[ ] Friday 11 closing COP plenary
further info: phred@sunlightdata.com