In less than two weeks, the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will gather in conference for the first time since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change. This meeting, the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will mark the beginning of a new phase of global climate action, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing said Tuesday.
The Paris Agreement will enter into force on Nov. 4, just days before the conference kicks off on Nov. 7 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The upcoming COP22 will be the first of its kind, Pershing said. “It’s a big shift. Paris was negotiation. Morocco is the start of phase two, the implementation phase,” he said during a presentation at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.
Most of the activity of COP22 will fall into one of three buckets, Pershing said. First, delegates and world leaders will reflect on the “new world dynamic” ushered in by the successful negotiation and extremely fast entry into force of the Paris Agreement, as well as recently struck international agreements on reducing aviation emissions and hydrofluorocarbons.
Second, work will move forward on an accelerated timeline to implement the Paris Agreement. The agreement requires nations to make a number of decisions regarding transparency, reporting by nations of progress, and financing climate action, among other items. A working group was established to prepare the draft decisions for the parties to the agreement before the deal entered into force. “They won’t be done by this meeting because no one thought it would come that quickly,” Pershing said. “But there’s going to be an accelerated timetable and a degree of urgency around that technical work. … We will be sitting down and doing the negotiations over those particulars.”
Finally, as host of the meeting, Morocco has designated themed days, during which delegates will discuss challenges in the selected topic. “Senior figures from around the world with expertise in each area will begin moving us away from the range of negotiation into the discussion on implementation,” Pershing said.
Subjects to be covered during the themed days are agriculture and food security, cities, energy, forests, business, oceans, transport, water, and gender.
Pershing also noted that the U.S. intends to release its midcentury strategy during COP22. The strategy, as called for under the Paris Agreement, is intended to reflect what progress a nation thinks it could make on climate change by 2050. “The so-called midcentury strategies, the pathways we lay out and which we plan to release in a couple of week in Morocco, will detail scenarios in which the U.S. can build a very low emission economy that lets us play our part in helping achieve our long-term global target of avoiding dangerous climate change,” Pershing said.
