Greg Odogwu
The world gathered again
this year in Bonn, Germany, to discuss climate change. The venue was supposed
to be the small island country, Fiji, the official host; but the small state –
first of its kind to play host for the annual climate negotiations could not
handle the logistics of hosting thousands of international delegations at the
same time. It began on Monday, November 6, and ended last Saturday, November
18, a day later than earlier scheduled.
The 23rd Conference
of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came at
a time when extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hurricanes and
wildfires have devastated millions of people around the world. It is a time
when we have become aware that not just the proclamations of science but
empirical evidence show that the years are progressively becoming hotter. For
instance, today in Abuja we are faced with a harmattan season that is as hot as
the so-called heat period of pre-rainy season ‘spring sauna’ months of
February-March-April.
The COP 23 was therefore expected to be propelled with a
universal ambition to achieve a landmark victory, clearly charting a course to
a promising development path towards implementation of the Paris Climate
Accord. By the end of the two weeks climate talks, however, one could sense
that the outcome cannot be said to measure up to the ambient urgency
perceptible from every part of the globe.
In any case, it was a
job well done for the organisers. Obviously, the rulebook for the Paris climate
agreement was finally taking shape. Frank Bainimarama, COP 23 President, said,
“We should all be very pleased that COP 23 has been a success. We have done the
job we were given to do, which was to advance the implementation guidelines of
the Paris agreement, and prepare for more ambitious action through the Talanoa
Dialogue of 2018.”
What is the Talanoa
Dialogue? Countries agreed two years ago in Paris that there should be a
one-off moment in 2018 to take stock of how climate action was progressing.
This information will be used to inform the next round of Nationally Determined
Contributions – which is due in 2020. Originally called the “facilitative
dialogue”, the name of this one-off process in 2018 was changed to “Talanoa
Dialogue” this year under the Fijian COP presidency. This was to reflect a
traditional approach to discussions used in Fiji for an “inclusive,
participatory and transparent” process. It will be structured around three
questions – “Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?”
The dialogue was
supposed to be a kind of opportunity-oriented, constructive and
solution-oriented conversation; obviously these kinds of engagements tend to be
very hard conversations in the UNFCCC context. But the world is set to adopt
it. It took some efforts before it was inserted in the COP 23 official outcome
document where the text pointedly says the dialogue “should not lead to
discussions of a confrontational nature” with individual parties being singled
out.
Therefore, reading in between the lines, one could
decipher that the Talanoa Dialogue is an abstract form of the scientific
mechanism for global climate engagement known as the Nationally Determined
Contributions. The Talanoa process takes effect from January 2018. The
preparatory phase will begin over the coming year, ahead of the political phase
to be conducted by ministers at the COP 24, taking place in Poland.
That aside, we should still be concerned by the fact that
the general objective of COP 23 was simply to move from words to action – NGOs
from around the world, developing countries’ delegations and international
organisations arrived in Bonn with this request; however at the close of talks
last Saturday, only unambitious steps were taken.
The small steps are noticeable: On the actions to take
from now until 2020 (without waiting for the Paris Agreement to become
operational); on reforming the agricultural system and on a renewed commitment
towards CO2 emissions reduction. However, on other key points in the fight
against climate change, the progress made was little and the postponements
many. This, I always describe as postponing the doomsday.
It will be noteworthy that next year, the promises made in
2015 by world governments for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (NDCs)
should be reviewed. At the COP23, it was recognised that these commitments are
not sufficient to meet the principal objective set in Paris, which is to limit
the rise in global average temperatures to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius by
the end of the century. The Talanoa Dialogue was launched with the aim of
“straightening” this trajectory (which today is set to be in the region of 3
degrees Celsius).
In all of this, one thing glaring is that the condition
for achieving any further milestone in the global fight against climate change
is the political will to do so. We can only keep our fingers crossed; time is
ticking, and the globe is still warming!
The world reeled from the US President Donald Trump’s
bombshell earlier this year; but we seem to have recovered from the shock.
During the COP 23, former and current governors of California, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown respectively, were there to represent the United
States, or at least its people. They animated the US Climate Action Center,
with their resolve: “We are still in coalition of states, cities, businesses
and the US organisations that have decided to continue to work towards
achieving the Paris Agreement’s targets, notwithstanding President Donald
Trump’s decision to withdraw from it.”
To be candid, another phrase for political will is the
“willingness to give”. The developed world is not showing leadership enough.
Like Armelle Le Comte, Advocacy Manager at Oxfam France, rightly observed, many
rich countries came to Bonn empty-handed, whereas they were expected to ramp
up, or at least fulfil, their commitments to the Green Climate Fund pre-2020
and post-2020. There were two main concerns: first, developed countries had not
yet delivered the promised $100bn per year in climate finance by 2020 agreed in
2009 at Copenhagen; second, the Doha Amendment, a second commitment period of
the Kyoto Protocol for the years leading up to 2020, had still not been
ratified by enough countries to bring it into force.
The good news is that pre-2020 ambition and implementation
formed a major part of the COP23 decision text agreed and published before it
closed. However, one can only hope that the developed countries “open their
wallets” soon. French President Emmanuel Macron, has called for a new climate
summit (christened One Planet), which will be held in the French capital on
the 12th of December and will be principally dedicated to the topic
of financing.
What is more, one should also hang onto the visible policy
milestones of Fiji’s COP 23 to nurture a hope for a better tomorrow. These
were the Gender Action Plan, which highlights the role of women in climate
action and promotes gender equality in the process, and the Local Communities
and Indigenous Peoples Platform, which aims to support the exchange of
experience and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation.
Fiji also launched the Ocean Pathway Partnership, which
aims to strengthen the inclusion of oceans within the UNFCCC process.
And for those of us who frown at the seeming resurgence of
dirty coal, a major event at the COP was the launch of the “Powering Past Coal
Alliance”, led by the UK and Canada. More than 20 countries and other
sub-national actors joined the alliance, including Denmark, Finland, Italy, New
Zealand, Ethiopia, Mexico and the Marshall Islands; as well as the US states of
Washington and Oregon. It aims to top 50 members by this time next year.
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