Countries meet in Bonn for the first time after the Katowice package was agreed at COP24 in Poland last year. The so-called Rulebook left some open issues to be discussed, which will be the main topics for this year’s COP25 in Chile. Here is how they progressed the first week of the Bonn session:
Carbon Markets
Market mechanisms is the only chapter under the Katowice Agreements that was left empty. Last year, countries could not agree on issues like how to avoid double counting at the last minute of the negotiations, and the whole discussion was postponed.
Discussions resumed this week in Bonn, and the COP25 Chilean presidency is stating that it will be important to have a decision this year. During the first week NGOs believe there were substantive discussions and good constructive spirit, but we are not seeing any concrete progress yet.
Common timeframes
Last year in Poland countries agreed that they would implement “common timeframes” from 2030 onwards. That means that, for now, they can keep their climate plans (or NDCs) as they are, which are designed for ten or five years of implementation.
Now countries have to find a way to homogenise this, and from 2030 onwards have a common structure: either they all submit their climate plans every five years, or every ten, or they find a solution in between.
As of now, divergence is still really deep. There has not been very much progress this session, bringing the text from 4 options to 6 options. There is also a big disagreement on when this decision has to be made, which could most likely go beyond COP25.
IPCC SR1.5
Last year at COP24 countries did not agree on how to “consider” the latest science of the IPCC – its Special Report on 1.5 – in the scientific body of the climate negotiations. The negotiations continued this week in Bonn, with no major progress so far. The discussions have been quite tense and polarised: while many countries recognise the importance of the report and want to highlight how it already affected countries’ policies, Saudi Arabia is consistently blocking the progress by arguing supposed gaps in the science. The draft conclusions presented by the Facilitators were dropped, and discussions will continue the second week.
Response measures
This Bonn session shows the first workshop and negotiations of Response Measures, which works on economic diversification and transformation, and just transition issues.
At the end of the week, countries designed a 6-year work plan which includes 11 pages of a table with a list of things to implement, including case studies, assessments, and workshops on a variety of issues like the impacts of certain mitigation policies or creating clean energy jobs.
Loss and Damage
This year in Chile will be the first time negotiators get to make a formal review of the last 5 years of the Warsaw International Mechanism. This year negotiators are due to review the workplan, which broadly initiated a series of annual meetings, an Executive Committee, and a series of studies that could help negotiators better understand how they can help countries deal with losses and damages created by climate change.
This week, developing countries have been asking to have a backward and forward looking review. They want to look at whether the WIM is capable of addressing the needs of L&D and future needs of developing countries. But the developed countries want to only have a backward looking review. By today, a draft TOR for the review will be released, with the hope to be finalised by Wednesday.
Transparency
The transparency chapter of the Paris Rulebook was closed at the last COP24. However, there was still an issue to be defined: the reporting tables for specific transparency issues, such as reporting on greenhouse gas emissions or the progress made to achieve NDCs.
In Bonn, countries have been discussing how will these tables look like. Two main issues have been raised during the first week. First of all, the need for flexibility within those tables, so we adapt to the capacity of developing countries, with capacity building included. The second one, avoiding clashes with ongoing Market Mechanism discussions.