Following the adoption and impending entry into force of the Paris Agreement, the world has entered a “new era” of climate action, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said Monday. “Leaving the phase of negotiations behind, this is a new era of collaboration,” Figueres said during the opening plenary of the two-week Bonn Climate Change Conference.
As negotiating the Paris Agreement, the world’s first universal international climate change accord, presented a host of obstacles that had to be overcome, this new era will also present challenges, Figueres said. “It is going to be very hard … to follow what is going to go on this year,” she said, noting that the run-up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December was relatively straightforward as all parties were working on the same central document.
That will not be the case with the next stages of the agreement. “We’re going to be seeing action taking place in many, many different places, in every sector in every country, and that’s going to make it very exciting because finally we are making a difference on the ground, we’re improving the lives of people, but it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to follow,” she said.
Indeed, several items are yet to be decided when it comes to the agreement. Frameworks for reporting and transparency of national climate action, climate-related loss and damage, along with some financing issues, will take more time to work through. Essentially, it is now time to write the agreement’s “rule book,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained at a press briefing during the conference.
Meyer expressed hope that the agreement will be brought into force sooner rather than later, as such a circumstance would mean that “the meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement can start making decisions and approving the rules.”
The agreement will come into effect once ratified by at least 55 parties representing at least 55 percent of global emissions. Currently, 177 nations have signed the agreement, and 16 nations — representing only .04 percent of global emissions — have ratified it. It is highly speculated that the agreement could come into force by the end of the year.
Until that time, the ad-hoc working group on the Paris Agreement (APA) will begin the tedious task of developing the first drafts of decisions on the frameworks in progress to be presented to the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA).
The APA begins its work now. The UNFCCC on Monday received two nominations for the position of co-chair of the APA: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Petroleum & Mineral Resources Advisor Sarah Baashan and Climate Change Ambassador Jo Tyndall of New Zealand. “It is really quite wonderful to see two new voices and two new inspirations to support the parties’ work as we move into this very exciting phase,” Figueres said of Baashan and Tyndall.
