Expert views: Countries meet in Bonn to restart negotiations on UN climate deal

Diplomats are gathering in Bonn, Germany, to negotiate the UN’s 2015 climate deal – the package that will determine what chance the world has of limiting global warming to below 2C over the coming decades.

Negotiations opened today with a 90-page text on the table. Countries have to slim this down into something that they will be able to handle during the two-week conference that will take place in Paris in December, where the agreement is expected to be signed.

The text under discussion is a melting pot of different views proposed by countries during the UN’s recent previous conferences in Lima and Geneva. Chopping it down to size will be a politically fraught task, as it will mean deciding whose views will bind the world in the years to come.

Carbon Brief has spoken to diplomats, analysts and campaigners about what the next two weeks are about, and what stumbling blocks could lie ahead.

Streamlining

Aslak Brun, chief climate negotiator for Norway, tells Carbon Brief that whittling down the negotiating text in Bonn will help determine the ultimate shape of the deal that emerges in Paris. He says:

“It is important to do away with repetitions and overlaps, but we need to move beyond mere streamlining. We should also make progress in developing the structure for the Paris agreement. In addition, we need to advance in our deliberations on what elements belong in the core agreement and what elements could be better captured in accompanying COP [Conference of Parties] decisions.”

(For the benefit of confused journalists in a press conference today, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres described the difference between the “Paris agreement” and the “Paris decision”. The agreement should be considered as a formal, structured text, she said, while the decision is the “instruction manual” that explains how to use it.)

But it may not be an easy task. The views currently contained in the text are held dear by many countries. There are still two UN sessions before the final showdown in Paris, and diplomats may be unwilling to abandon their proposals so soon. In a briefing on the talks, Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability and climate change at PwC, says:

“Real progress is unlikely as countries will not compromise much at this point.”

Indeed, some issues are expected to run on until Paris, explains Shane Tomlinson, a senior research fellow on energy and climate at Chatham House. He tells Carbon Brief:

“I think some of the really big ticket issues, like how we precisely reflect differentiation between countries, big decisions on the overall levels of finance, resolving things like loss and damage, I think those are going to run forward towards the Paris conference itself, and that’s something where we’ll need heads of state or very senior ministers engaged in order to resolve countries’ difficulties around there.

“I think what parties should do in Bonn is focus on the other areas of the text where they can make more progress at the official level. What’s important is we don’t lose options that are important for integrity, so particularly in areas like MRV [monitoring, reporting and verification], keeping those options on the table is going to be important.”

The specifics

The UN climate deal is expected to be a patchwork of commitments across various sectors that will enable all countries to tackle their emissions. How these are stitched together will depend to some extent on the work done in Bonn.

Finance will be key to enabling poorer countries to implement the technology necessary to adapt to climate impacts and reduce their emissions. Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid‘s senior climate change advisor, would like to see this reflected in the discussions. He says in a statement:

“There has been a lot of talk about emissions cuts but in Bonn developed countries need to address adaptation and climate finance. It is the elephant in the room, which rich countries seem to be trying to ignore. If they are not careful these two issues have the potential to cause a huge problem in Paris. Poorer countries are waiting to see a credible roadmap to the promised $100bn of climate finance from developed countries…Bonn is a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for a successful outcome in Paris.”

Since March, countries have been submitting their “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs), setting out how they will tackle their emissions beyond 2020 and up to 2030. Many more are expected to come forward before December, although it is unlikely that the aggregated proposals will be enough to keep the world below an agreed limit of 2C.

Liz Gallagher, who leads E3G‘s climate diplomacy programme, said in a press call that countries need to figure out in Bonn how they can design a ratchet mechanism to ensure ambitions increase over time. She says:

“We know that these INDCs won’t achieve an outright 2C outcome, but what we need to mark for Paris is the way that we’ll get back onto the trajectory for 2C, so how we are actually going to achieve it. So the ratchet mechanism is something that hasn’t really been discussed as much as we’d like, and Bonn is going to be the place where we think that parties will really start to tease out exactly what it means and how they might operationalise it.”

Norway’s Aslak Brun adds that there needs to be more focus in Bonn on pre-2020 ambition (Workstream 2, in UN jargon) – the often neglected stream of the UN negotiations, in which countries discuss how they will scale up their actions ahead of the Paris deal, which will only kick in after 2020. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Workstream 2 on closing the pre-2020 emission gap is another priority. We hope the Bonn session will be able to draft a COP decision on how this important work will be taken forward after Paris.”

Dirk Forrister, president of the International Emissions Trading Association, tells Carbon Brief that there needs to be a more coherent approach to carbon markets at Bonn. He says:

“The EU’s submission on Friday is helpful in bringing market matters to the fore as climate negotiators begin two weeks of talks, and we hope that markets continue to get airtime in Bonn.”

For some of the most vulnerable countries, such as the small island states, the UN’s review of the 2C target is important. Deborah Barker-Manase, the Marshall Islands’ deputy permanent representative to the UN, told Carbon Brief:

“The UNFCCC has just released an expert report detailing the serious risks faced by the most vulnerable if we don’t set – let alone achieve – the highest range of ambition: for example in the Pacific Ocean sea level rise is already four times the global average. To avoid the worst, ambition must be at the heart of the design of the Paris Agreement.”

Countries

The various blocs of countries will come to Bonn facing different national circumstances, and in various of stages of preparing their INDCs.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China can be expected to fall under a large amount of scrutiny. Li Shuo, senior climate and energy policy officer for Greenpeace East Asia, tells Carbon Brief:

“We think with the soon-to-be-submitted INDC, China should play a leading role in the accelerating UN climate process all the way to Paris. Over the past months, we are observing a very significant energy transition in China. Coal consumption has declined by 2.9% last year and has declined even further in the first four months of this year. The associated emission reductions have already brought global energy-related CO2 growth to a halt. We now urgently need to bring this real world progress into the meeting rooms in Bonn and ensure we go back from there with a more manageable Paris text.”

Mexico was the first developing country to submit its INDC. Guy Edwards, a research fellow at Brown University, tells Carbon Brief that Latin American countries can play a constructive role at Bonn:

“I think it would be very encouraging to see some of the more progressive Latin American countries – the AILACs [Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Peru and Paraguay], Uruguay, some other central American countries, and hopefully Brazil – to go to Bonn and really push the message home that the INDCs are being taken seriously, that ministers and hopefully presidents are backing an INDC process that includes public consultations, and how this isn’t some little abstract UNFCCC thing, that the INDCs are really being framed as a key development goal.”

The Bonn negotiations will also provide an opportunity for countries to quiz each other on their actions to reduce emissions before 2020. On 4-5 June, 24 developed countries will be questioned by their peers, including Canada, Australia, Russia and the UK.

For Australia, considered something of a laggard after prime minister Tony Abbott axed the country’s carbon tax, this process will show that its actions are under scrutiny, says The Climate Institute, an Australian think-tank, in a briefing:

“Formal questions have already been asked by China, Brazil, the US, the EU and others, raising doubts around the international credibility of Australia’s emissions reduction targets and domestic policies. On 4 June, Australia is scheduled to stand up in an international forum to answer direct questions from other countries and justify its climate change actions to date…The multilateral process so far is a clear signal that the rest of the world is paying careful attention to Australia’s domestic targets and policies. When Australia faces its review session in Bonn this scrutiny will continue, giving Australia a taste of what to expect should its post-2020 targets also be considered inadequate by our key international partners.”

Wider politics

The Bonn talks are just one element of a diplomatically intense few weeks. On 7-8 June, G7 ministers will meet under Germany’s leadership. It is a meeting that could have important implications for the discussions in Bonn, explains E3G’s Liz Gallagher:

“For the G7 itself, we’ll likely have some of the world’s most powerful countries calling for a long term decarbonisation goal. This goal marks the first time that countries have officially called for an additional policy or proposal that helps to operationalise the 2C obligation that we agreed in Cancun a few years ago. So it sends a really strong signal and positive signal that the G7 is listening to their citizens, the businesses that have been calling for it over the past week, and that sends a really strong signal to Paris and to Bonn saying this is an issue which should be dealt with in part of the coming preparations.”

On 10-11 June, diplomats from the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC) will meet in Brussels for the biannual summit, carrying a theme of sustainability. Brown’s Guy Edwards explains the significance of the session:

“Given the timing, climate change is going to feature inevitably, and I think the timing of this is very encouraging – not so much because it’s just after Bonn, but more the fact it’s this year and it’s before Paris, and the EU and CELAC represent one of the strongest bi-regional partnerships on climate change. There’s 61 countries with the EU and CELAC together, and if these countries can be part of a high ambition alliance, I think that could be a positive thing for the negotiation process this year.”

With a 90-page text and a long list of issues to be resolved before and during Paris, it’s likely to be a busy couple of weeks in Bonn. With careful politics – and a strict approach to timekeeping – it is hoped that the discussions taking place help ease the way towards a successful climate deal at the end of the year.

Main image: Bonn, Germany.