The Paris Agreement will enter into force days before the next Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a stunning achievement that may leave those involved in the COP scrambling. To start, some leftover measures for implementing the climate change accord are now on the agenda for the next COP meeting, but they’re not yet ready.
Until recently, entry into force of the agreement, which was adopted at the last Conference of Parties, COP21 in Paris in December 2015, seemed farfetched. However, a massive international push resulted in the successful triggering of the milestone earlier this week.
When the agreement was initially drafted, it was to enter into force in 2020, after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol. However, during negotiations at COP21, diplomats decided instead that the accord would reach that milestone 30 days after domestic ratification by 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even with the adoption of the 55/55 rule, the agreement was not expected to enter into force until at least 2018 or 2017 at the earliest.
A total of 11 new parties ratified the agreement Wednesday, surpassing the 55/55 threshold and setting the agreement up to enter into force Nov. 4, just before COP22, scheduled for Nov. 7-18 in Marrakesh, Morocco. Thursday, Rwanda joined, bringing the current count to 75 nations representing a total of 58.84 percent of global emissions,
While the development has been internationally applauded, it does raise a few new questions moving forward, starting right away in Marrakesh, Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and an expert on international climate policy and UNFCCC negotiations, told GHG Daily on Thursday. “There are some new wrinkles,” he said. “I mean, there are a couple of procedural fixes that will have to be made because they didn’t anticipate the agreement would enter into force so quickly.”
The entry into force of the agreement serves as the inception of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA). Under the agreement, the CMA is supposed to adopt a few implementing decisions that were not ironed out in the Paris Agreement. The issue, Diringer said, is that the body tasked with providing the draft decisions to the CMA isn’t done working on them.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) was established in the accord and tasked with preparing a draft decision in four particular areas:
- Guidance relating to nationally determined contributions;
- “Modalities, procedures and guidelines for the transparency framework for action and support;”
- Modalities for the global emissions stock take; and
- “Modalities and procedures for the effective operation of the mechanism to facilitate implementation and promote compliance.”
The APA started work this year but “hasn’t made a lot of substantive progress,” Diringer said. It will meet again during COP22 in Marrakesh to continue the work. “They’re not going to conclude any of those issues in Marrakesh, those are all going to continue on for at least another year, maybe two,” he said.
However, under the agreement, the APA is supposed to deliver the draft decisions to the first meeting of the CMA (CMA1) and then disband. The working group cannot feasibly complete its work by CMA1, which means the CMA must decide how to deal with that conflict.
A couple things might happen, Diringer said. The group may choose to continue or suspend the CMA until the APA has completed its work. “They need to continue or suspend it for a couple of reasons. One, to allow more time to actually negotiate those decisions, but it’s also a way of allowing for a more inclusive decision-making,” he said.
A UNFCCC information note published in April addresses the potential early entry into force of the agreement and a subsequently small CMA1. “Should CMA 1 be convened with a minimal number of Parties to the Paris Agreement, this would result in important decisions concerning the operationalization and implementation of the Agreement being taken by only a small number of Parties. In order to avoid this situation, an option would be to convene CMA 1 … and then suspend it, with a view to its resumption at the next ordinary session of the COP. This would allow many more Parties to the Convention to ratify the Agreement thereby enabling them to participate in decision-making at the resumed session,” the note says.
The agreement was adopted by nearly 200 nations and has been signed by 191. However, only 74 have ratified, meaning 117 nations that have signaled their intent to formally join aren’t technically parties to the deal. Continuing or suspending the CMA will allow those nations more time to complete their ratification processes and take part in the CMA negotiations.
“Parties to the Convention that are not Parties to the Paris Agreement may participate as observers in the proceedings of the CMA and make interventions. They cannot, however, participate in decision-making by the CMA,” the information note says.
The other thing that is likely to happen at CMA1, particularly if the CMA is suspended, is that the group will grant the APA an extension, according to Diringer. “One question is whether they fix a deadline for [the APA] concluding all these issues under the agreement. Most of the decisions that are due it says that they’re supposed to be taken up at CMA1. For a couple of issues, the agreement actually established a deadline, which is 2018, so I think the most likely outcome is setting 2018 as the deadline for the entire package of decisions,” Diringer said.
The extension of the APA is also supported in the UNFCCC note, which explains that in the case of suspension of the CMA, “[t]he on-going work under the APA and the subsidiary and constituted bodies would continue under the authority and guidance of the CMA and these bodies would report to the CMA on progress in their work.”
