After the excitement coming out of Paris, with a brand-new agreement that brought the world together to combat climate change, the COP has returned to its usual slow pace here in Marrakech. The talk is centered on celebrating entry to force how to effectively implement the Paris Agreement going forward. While these kinds of talks are not as exciting as last year they are immensely important in successfully reaching the goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done to finalize the rule book for Paris especially after such rapid entry into force. For reference the Kyoto Protocol did not reach entry into force until 2005 (8 years after its adoption in 1997). The talk here has been much more urgent, focusing on finalizing the rule book by 2018 at COP24 at the latest. While 2 years may seem like a long time to some, it is extremely quick compared to the pace that international negotiation usually take place.
Source: www.amcadd.org
One of the main topics under discussion here in Marrakech is the need to establish how the pledge and review process in the Paris Agreement is going to work. The idea behind the Paris Agreement is to have all countries submit nationally determined contributes (NDC) to reduce GHG emissions — the pledge process. It is then up to the international community to review these pledges to make sure they are ambitious enough to meet the agreement temperature reduction targets and that the countries are achieving their contributions.
Every five years’ countries are supposed to revise and increase their NDCs. Processes need to be finalize so that both steps of the pledge and review can be successfully implemented. Countries need to be held accountable at the international level to both commit to ambitious enough levels of reductions and to meet their commitments with appropriate domestic policies.
As I write this I’m sitting here in the main plenary hall listening to various country delegates speak. They are all focused on what actions their countries are committed to and what they would like to see happen at the COP. It is fascinating to listen to the commitment by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) and Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to moving progress forward as quickly as possible. They consistently refer to the meetings as the “actions COP” and stress the need to finalize the rule book by 2017. For many of these countries even 1.5 degrees warming represents drastic changes to their countries and livelihood. The momentum that has been gained from the Paris Agreement must be continued and not squandered in the usually slow progress of multilateral negotiations.
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