Was COP22 a success?

COP22, the 22nd annual Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held at Marrakech concluded with the release of the Marrakech Action Proclamation, which "celebrates the unstoppable global momentum on climate change and sustainable development action".

Pertinently, the Paris Agreement, adopted amidst much fanfare in 2015, has put the world on a new track to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with a view to keep the rise in temperature well below 2°C and possibly below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The agreement has entered into force on November 4, a month after meeting the twin threshold of at least 55 countries emitting 55 per cent of global GHG emissions.

COP of action

Countries sought to begin operationalisation of the Paris Agreement at COP22.

Hakima El Haite, Moroccan minister for environment, has stated that if Lima in 2014 was the COP of negotiations, Paris in 2015 the COP of decisions, then Marrakech 2016 is "the COP of action". Nearly 22,000 participants including heads of states, diplomats, NGOs, activists, scientists, and businesses congregated to put the recently-enforced Paris Agreement into action.

A multitude of issues were discussed at closed door formal negotiations and informal consultations between countries. Many side events, involving all stakeholders, took place on themes such as gender, resilience, civil society, indigenous people, youth, oceans, public health, agriculture, renewables, cities et al and their interplay with the planet’s changing climate.

Businesses, investors, cities and local governments undertook fresh voluntary commitments, building on those made at Paris in 2015. The NDC partnership, a coalition of many countries, non-state actors and international institutions committed to ambitious NDC implementation, was created. The Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action was launched to provide a roadmap for climate action by countries and other stakeholders in the period 2017 to 2020. It may be mentioned that the early few days of the conference were also shadowed by Donald Trump’s win in the American presidential elections and the future role of America in the international climate regime.

Even though some of them were inadequately addressed, COP 22 tackled several matters at the very heart of the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC.

Mitigation

The Paris Agreement has introduced a bottom-up approach of emission reduction by inviting countries to submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) stating their respective emissions mitigation targets. NDCs must be prepared and submitted to the UN every five years and each successive NDC must progress beyond the previous one.

As of now, indicative NDCs have already been submitted by most countries and are placed in an interim registry. Once the Paris Agreement is implemented, NDCs will be recorded in a public registry.

NDCs vary from country to country in terms of schedules and baselines. With a view to integrate NDCs in national policies and investment plans, and correctly assess mitigation efforts. At Marrakech, countries discussed the need for and method to develop further guidance on NDCs, such as a uniform set of guidelines to facilitate transparency, clarity and understanding as well as appropriate accounting procedures for emissions and their removal.

Negotiations on NDCs, however, were slow and contested. Developed countries wanted the NDC registry to focus only on mitigation whereas developing countries wanted to include adaptation goals and financial requirements also. Countries will now send their respective views to the UN and further discussions will take place in a roundtable in May 2017.

Adaptation

The Paris Agreement has breathed life into the adaptation aspect of climate change. Countries are under obligation to submit adaptation communications, which may include the adaptation efforts undertaken or underway, future adaptation goals, and monitoring procedures. Like the NDCs, adaptation communications will also be recorded in a public registry maintained by the UN.

Countries discussed, amidst other things, the purpose and elements of adaptation communication – priorities, plans, programs, strategies, costs, implementation, actions, support needs – as well as the mode of information to the UN.

All the participating nations have been asked to submit their views to the UN within three months.

Finance

As always, finance proved to be a difficult area to negotiate. Climate finance is crucial for emissions mitigation and climate change adaptation. For this purpose, at COP 15 in Copenhagen, rich countries pledged to give $100 billion per year to developing countries by 2020. As per the "roadmap to US$100 billion" released by developed countries in October, 67 per cent of the finance will come from public sources and the remainder will be mobilised from the private sector.

Of this only 20 per cent of the money will go towards adaptation and the rest will address mitigation. This proved to be a controversial issue during the negotiations. Developed countries were not in favour of increasing the amount of adaptation finance. The limited amount left for adaptation jeopardises the balance struck by the Paris Agreement between mitigation and adaptation. Insufficient adaptation finance is likely to have a debilitating impact on the vulnerable communities.

Developing countries were sceptical about the mobilisation of private finance because climate finance has, by and large, no commercial value and could fail to materialise.

Developed countries also insisted on the acceptance of accounting methods which developing countries claimed were dubious. Interestingly, the official UN report on 2016 biennial assessment of climate finance flows also takes note of several inconsistencies in the data provided by the developed countries. Whether enough finance will flow to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement remains to be seen.

Capacity building

The Paris Committee on capacity-building was established under the Paris Agreement for the purpose of addressing gaps and needs in implementing capacity-building in developing countries. The countries decided that the panel will be operational in 2017 and will focus on enhancing capacity-building efforts such as implementation of training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.

It will also foster global, regional, national and sub-national cooperation. In its first session, the committee will concentrate on capacity-building activities for the implementation of NDCs. It will also take into account cross-cutting issues such as gender responsiveness, human rights and indigenous peoples’ knowledge and explore synergies for enhanced collaboration with a variety of actors.

The Paris Agreement will be implemented with the help of modalities, procedures and guidelines on a number of issues such as mitigation, adaptation, transparency, transfer of technology, finance, capacity building, implementation and compliance.

These will be spelt out in the rule book, the writing of which has already begun and will be completed by 2018. Therefore, discussions, workshops and roundtables on key questions will continue in the forthcoming months. As to whether COP22 was a success, the jury is still out.