Streamlining Day 3 in Geneva

Here in Geneva, a city more well known for being expensive or as the European home of the United Nations than for its protest culture, talks today have opened with calls for stronger action from the local “Climate Justice and Society” group.

Heeding these calls, much of yesterday was spend focusing on climate mitigation, otherwise known as Workstream 2. Negotiations during this ADP session have advanced further with with parties bringing up pragmatic suggestions of how to increase the climate regime’s efficiency:

• A short timeframe of five years for mitigation commitments was proposed by Brazil;
• The EU called for periodic revisions and a dynamic annex system, in which parties could raise their mitigation targets independently.
• To increase the compliance of mitigation targets AOSIS, CARICOM and the Marshall Islands suggested the creation of a special committee.
• Bolivia went even further calling for the creation of an international climate justice tribunal.
• Mexico’s call to enable decisions made by a 2/3 majority with an exception regarding finance would increase internal efficiency.

An efficient approach has paid off: 70 pages of negotiation text, representing the work, was meant to require at least six days of negotiation has been completed in just three. With no shortage of suggestions, even with negotiators looking for a workable answer, the bigger question is now: what next? The search for a new structured procedural approach has started – and may go on for all of today. The co-chairs have even suggested going back to negotiating the text agreed upon in Lima. All agree upon the need of streamlining—although this is still a contentious area—and eliminating repetitious elements without losing different thoughts and opinions.

One possible way forward would see parties benefiting from Genevan efficiency and immediately begin the streamlining process by going through the text again, focusing on structure and language rather than content. Without a clear procedural methodological approach though, there’s a high risk that this will just result in another lengthy text. Another option is handing more responsibility over to the chairs to streamline things between now and June.

Climate Action Network (CAN) International, representing over 800 organisations and are acknowledged as one of the civil society voices in Geneva, in the streamlining process, are advocating for the inclusion of:

• References to ensure that things remain on a 1.5°C trajectory;
• An adaptation goal reflecting the codependency between mitigation ambition and subsequent adaptation needs;
• A clear pathway with milestones for reaching US$100 billion annually by 2020 in terms of scaling up finance commitments; and
• A review mechanism with five-year assessment periods.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, and perhaps the reason why this session started on Sunday, ECO is welcoming delegates in Geneva to its “Valentine’s Nest”.

With reporting from Linh Do.