Update from Bonn Climate Change Conference – March 2014
A scheduled meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) was held in Bonn during 10-14 March 2014. At the last UN Climate Change conference held in Warsaw in November 2014, countries had agreed to initiate or intensify domestic preparations for the intended, nationally-determined contributions to be included in the 2015 agreement. The objective of the meeting was to discuss elements of the new climate agreement to table an initial draft text by December 2014. Diplomats from about 200 countries attended the meeting.
In the backdrop of climate change related events felt across the globe, the U.N. said earlier last week that emissions before 2020 are on track to amount to at least 20 billion tonnes above the level scientists say is needed to avert runaway climate change. Thus, a huge ambition gap exists between current plans of the countries and required emission reductions to keep temperature rise within agreed 2°C.
Establishment of a formal contact group to draft the agreement was the biggest breakthrough this week. For two years, the ADP has been negotiating through “open-ended” talks. The Contact Group will develop text of the agreement in consultation with countries.
The formal process will start at the next round of Bonn talks in June 2014 with the aim of agreeing on the main elements of a deal at a high-level session in Lima, Peru at the end of the year. This agreement draft will be discussed further to generate formal draft text by May 2015, all with a view to enabling the negotiations to successfully conclude in December 2015.