In order to deal with the chaos of COP, and per the request of my client (Sustainable Ocean Alliance) and my personal interest in AOSIS, I have been focusing primarily on Loss and Damage negotiations. 

 

As of time of writing, Loss and Damage negotiations are stalled due to the slow progress being made on the NCQG. Parties have yet to discuss the quantum and there is a quiet understanding in the Loss and Damage negotiation room that finances cannot be discussed without having a specific NCQG quantum in mind. Additionally, in the NCQG negotiation room there is a quiet understanding that the US cannot be making promises on annual financial commitments given the election results. Lastly, to add another layer to this, there is also an unspoken understanding that the pressure is on negotiators to make some substantial progress so that this year’s COP is not deemed a failure by the general public.

 

Observers are invited to these negotiation spaces to make interventions – however, parties have been content with letting the unspoken conflicts go unaddressed. The interventions from parties have typically followed the format of thanking the chair for moderating, reiterating the importance of Loss and Damage and the progress made in ‘huddles’ and using that as a starting point. None of these points give a useful entry point for observers to make interventions. Moreover, it does call into question the effectiveness of these ‘public’ negotiations if the compromises are made in late-night or early-morning huddles, away from the public eye. Additionally, these huddles are not crossing the binary – Annex 1 countries have yet to huddle with non-Annex 1 countries. This lack of substantial progress in week 1 is frustrating to see, given that the major challenges of negotiating the quantum, contributor base and fund allocation have all been put aside for week 2 and even then there are still matters to be negotiated before we get to those big 3 goals.

 

It is also apparent that this method of skirting around the conflict is starting to show cracks. An example of this was at the end of week 1, where parties were asked to draft a negotiation text for Loss and Damage for week 2. The Annex 1 countries kept the focus on finance vague which drew the ire of the Africa Group, who expressed their concern that if not done now, time would be wasted in discussing finance items to be negotiated. A back-and-forth happened between the Africa Group and the European Union where both parties reiterated their points, albeit in separate manners every time, and failed to reach a consensus by the end of the meeting, which really drew the frustration of Kenya who requested for parties to stay back until they could reach a consensus. I do believe all negotiators want to come away with at least one tangible outcome on climate finance – a concrete NCQG quantum, an operationalized Loss and Damage fund or a bolstered Adaptation fund. However, there is a larger conflict at play between the receding timeline and the general theme of conflict aversion that may lead to some sparks in week 2.