At the climate negotiations this December, countries must adopt guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement at the national level. The Paris Implementation Guidelines are essential to ensuring that climate action around the world keeps global temperature rise below 1.5°C while respecting and protecting human rights. But after multiple rounds of talks, including a special session in September, how close are they?
As we near the COP24 climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland, let’s take a look back at the progress we’ve made in the past few months. In December, the world must come together to adopt the Paris Agreement Implementation Guidelines — the “rulebook” that countries will use when they carry out climate action at the national level.
In order to reach an agreement in time, countries attended a special negotiating session in Bangkok this September that focused entirely on these guidelines. Without any side events or other (important) agenda items planned, negotiators immediately dove into technical work. Unfortunately, however, progress was slow and limited. For some issues, countries worked together to take unwieldy tools and turn them into concrete text.
But as the clock ticks down to December, there remains immense work to be done and little progress at the very heart of the guidelines: rules on how countries will develop their commitments to reduce emissions and contribute to the global effort to stave off climate change’s worst effects.
Some of the key issues remaining as we approach COP24 are also some of the most contentious, including:
What will countries’ national commitments and plans to reduce emissions look like?
The Paris Agreement relies on all countries taking action to combat climate change. The main tool for that is domestic action through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — essentially, the plan each country will follow to reduce their own emissions and adapt to climate change. While every country has to have an NDC, the what and how can be different. What these guidelines include is a critical question: Countries should be invited and encouraged to develop comprehensive NDCs, including information about how human rights considerations — such as gender equality or the right to take part in decision-making — will play into climate action.
How will countries finance implementation?
Climate action comes with a cost. So while many developing countries are committed to taking action, they need support (read: money). But how will this be reflected? Developing countries who are among the most affected by climate change are also least responsible for the problem. There needs to be greater clarity and reporting on this finance, and much more of it. Developed countries also need to step up and recommit to providing public climate finance.
So where are we? In October, the co-chairs of the climate negotiations released new text to help countries continue making progress toward a robust rulebook. That text remains lengthy and contains many draft sections that have yet to be agreed upon. And many options, including critical ones that integrate social issues and promote public participation in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, remain on the table. But, as they start COP24, Parties hopefully will accept it as a basis for moving forward, rather than reversing progress.
Communities around the world are relying on countries to adopt a robust, comprehensive set of Implementation Guidelines at COP24. And without agreeing to a set of guidelines reflecting all elements of the Paris Agreement — guided by the vision of the Preamble of the Agreement, which includes human rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and other principles — we won’t be able to achieve the people-centered climate action that will lead to better outcomes for both communities and our planet.
To get there, significant work remains. Everyone needs to roll up their sleeves and do the critical work necessary to ensure the guidelines are strong enough to fully implement the Paris Agreement in a rights-based and people-centered way.
The world is counting on it.
By Erika Lennon, Senior Attorney
Originally posted on November 16, 2018