A new round of negotiations ended in Geneva on Friday, two months after the Lima conference. This week represents an encouraging step forward that has enabled the Parties to take ownership of the text (which had been annexed to the Agreement of Lima), to add their proposals, to hear and better understand each other’s positions, and to lead in a constructive atmosphere towards a new text that will serve as a basis for the Paris negotiations. The two new co-presidents in particular, Ahmed Djoghlaf and Daniel Reifsnyder, made this possible, by being able to lead the discussions in a manner that was recognized by all as being effective, inclusive and transparent.
However, there remains a long way to go before a coherent vision shared by all Parties of the post-2020 climate regime can be drawn from the set of options that the text now includes.
If we hope to reach an agreement in Paris, it is now time for the negotiations to start, i.e. we must choose from the available options and find compromises. This poses a double challenge: firstly, that of obtaining a coherent shared vision from among the multiple options and through a point-to-point negotiation process; secondly, as IDDRI noted before the start of the Geneva conference, the challenge of defining the outline of a new climate regime without having yet determined all of its detailed modalities.
One of the guiding issues is that of equity and differentiation. Countries have pledged to publish their national contributions in the coming months. This will be the first time that every country in the world has engaged in such an exercise, and it raises many questions. All countries will not contribute to global action in the same way. How can a sense of fairness be nevertheless ensured among countries? Should there be a single system, for example, for transparency, monitoring and the legal nature of contributions, or is a range of different systems acceptable?
Above all, how can a high level of ambition be collectively achieved? Current discussions on the long-term objectives outline what could be a “collective horizon”, that would send out a strong signal, but the pathways to reach this horizon remain unclear [1]. National contributions will be a first step that will certainly give some indications (including indicators and targets) on how countries envisage their actions over the years ahead, not only in terms of their mitigation efforts but also, potentially, for their adaptation strategies, as was discussed at length in Lima. Then, to achieve a level of ambition that is sufficient to meet the long-term goal, and also to be able to take account of changing circumstances in each country, it will be necessary to repeat this exercise regularly and to devise a periodic review system. As explained in a recent IDDRI publication, cycles (of 5 years for example) could be envisage, during which the parties could present new commitments for the period ahead, within a rationale of a “spiral of ambition”. In parallel, to ensure the predictability and ambition of this mechanism, Parties could present indicative goals covering several periods as well as their long-term low-carbon development strategies.
This implies the implementation of new examples of cooperation, as well as support and funding mechanisms to accompany the countries undergoing this transition. In addition to the questions being raised relating to the capitalization of the Green Fund by 2020, other difficult questions will have to be answered on defining the post-2020 funding system. How can “climate finance” be better defined? What objectives are credible and up to the task? What will be the sources of this finance and how will additional resources be mobilized? The development of a comprehensive framework to strengthen existing adaptation mechanisms and the better structuring of international collaboration will also be key issues for the new system.
Although trust between countries seems to have been established, at least for now, and a range of options is available, the next step is likely to be more difficult: reducing the number of options, outlining the agreement to be adopted in Paris and establishing consensuses and alliances, to build the next international climate regime. This is the challenge of the coming months, starting with the negotiating session to be held in June in Bonn.
[1] The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project brings together research teams from fifteen countries to work together on this issue.
