Rethinking the Legal Form and Principles of a New Climate Agreement (original) (raw)
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At the upcoming 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), which will take place in Paris from 30 November to 11 December 2015, Parties are set to conclude a new international agreement. This agreement will take the form of “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force”2, and will be applicable to all UNFCCC Parties. It is currently being negotiated through a process known as the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP). The agreement will establish new mitigation commitments for Parties, as well as commitments on finance, adaptation, loss and damage (which may be included under adaptation or as a separate issue), technology development and transfer, and capacity building. It will take a partially “bottom up” approach, enabling Parties to determine their own mitigation commitments, potentially subject to review processes and other mechanisms to increase ambition. Law and governance systems can foster or frustrate efforts to implement the proposed 2015 climate agreement. In this background paper, the new climate agreement negotiating text is outlined, key principles are discussed, and legal issues raised by the text are identified and analyzed. It is recognized that law and governance will be essential to consider if Parties are to succeed in meeting their commitments. Indeed, a number of countries may decide to reform their laws and institutions in order to implement the new agreement, leading to a pressing need for legal knowledge, expertise and capacity building.
The Bali Roadmap for Global Climate Policy—New Horizons and Old Pitfalls
Journal for European Environmental & Planning Law, 2008
The international climate negotiations have seen endless struggles between countries from South and North for almost 17 years, ever since the initiation of negotiations by the International Negotiation Committee (INC) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and the 3rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP 13 / CMP 3) held in Bali in December 2007 (the Bali conference) could mark the beginning of a rapprochement. Parties agreed on initiating a new “Ad-hoc working group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention” (AWG-LCA) that aims to negotiate a post-2012 agreement with participation of all parties, including the US and developing countries, by the end of 2009 at COP 15 / CMP 5 in Copenhagen. This article examines the outcomes of the Bali conference, focussing on the negotiations regarding post-2012, flexible m...
The road to Durban and beyond: the progress of international climate change negotiations
Policy Quarterly, 2012
Following a familiar pattern of UN climate change negotiations, the 2011 Durban conference of the parties (COP17) was concluded by sleep-deprived delegates well after its scheduled end, after crises and last-minute drama. Just what it might mean for the future was not immediately obvious to observers. Early reactions ranged from seeing yet another failure by governments to grasp the seriousness and urgency of climate change – ‘a disaster for us all’ – to much more positive assessments. The executive secretary of the UNFCCC (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), Christiana Figueres, described Durban as ‘without doubt … the most encompassing and furthest reaching conference in the history of the climate change negotiations’.
Review of European Community and International Environmental Law, 2009
This article provides an update on the status of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 3 months before the fifteenth Conference of the Parties is scheduled to reach an historic agreement on enhancing international climate change cooperation. It gives a brief overview of the process that is taking place under two distinct negotiating tracks and highlights the key substantive issues under the main areas of cooperation – namely mitigation, adaptation, technology and capacity building, as well as finance. It also briefly addresses the legal form of the outcome and outlines the main options for the post-2012 legal framework.With only 3 weeks of negotiating time remaining before Copenhagen and a myriad of politically sensitive issues yet to be agreed and technical details to be addressed, it has become increasingly clear that moving the process forward will require a high-level political compromise and that many of the details that will give the post-2012 climate regime its shape will only be agreed after Copenhagen.
Prolegómenos
The purpose of this article is to analyze, within the scope of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, how the Conference of the Parties provides a new locus for discussion within the International Environmental Law. Increasing scientific evidence about the possibility of global climate change in the 1980s led to growing awareness that human activities have been contributing to substantial increases in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Concerned with it, on December 11, 1990, the 45th session of the un General Assembly adopted a resolution that established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC). It was the beginning of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and also the beginning of the establishment of the Conferences of the Parties, which is currently in its 25th edition. The Paris Agreement was negotiated at the 21st edition of the Conference of the Parties and is ...
The Bali roadmap: new horizons for global climate policy
Climate Policy, 2008
What is the significance of the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali? The formal outcomes, especially the 'Bali Action Plan', are described and commented on, along with the challenges for negotiating a post-2012 agreement in Copenhagen during 2008 and 2009. The article concludes that the outcome of the Bali meeting is insufficient when compared to the nature of the challenge posed by climate change. However, it can nevertheless be considered a success in terms of 'Realpolitik' in paving the way for the negotiations ahead, because some real changes have been discerned in the political landscape. The challenges for the road towards Copenhagen are manifold: the sheer volume and complexity of the issues and the far-reaching nature of decisions such as differentiation between non-Annex I countries pose significant challenges in themselves, while the dependency on the electoral process in the USA introduces a high element of risk into the whole process. The emergence of social justice as an issue turns climate policy into an endeavour to improve the world at large-thereby adding to the complexity. And, finally, the biggest challenge is the recognition that the climate problem requires a global solution, that Annex I and non-Annex I countries are mutually dependent on each other and that only cooperation regarding technology in combination with significant financial support will provide the chance to successfully tackle climate change.