Climate change & COP23: urgency, exams, rules and the Talanoa spirit

The Elcano Royal Institute is a think-tank for international and strategic studies that analyses world events and trends from a Spanish, European and global perspective.

The Analyses of the Elcano Royal Institute (ARI)are short pieces - of around 3,000 words - on aspects of current international affairs considered to be of relevance to Spain, its foreign policy or its security. In broad terms ARIs are intended to have a predictive bearing on events.Tackling climate change in earnest requires governing a ‘super wicked’ collective action problem through non-marginal actions across time horizons that expand regular market timescales. From scientists to policymakers and individuals we all need to be involved. Increasingly ambitious global action is key, as analyses by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released prior to COP23 confirm that greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise while efforts to reduce emissions are insufficient to hold temperature increases to a bearable level in a year in which the world has endured significant extreme weather events. Physical risks from climate change are increasingly clear.

The Paris Agreement provided the collective framework to limit temperature increases to well below 2ºC above preindustrial levels, but international rules that will govern the Paris Agreement are yet to be finalised. National climate laws and policies that are fostered, inter alia, by the Paris Agreement ensure action on the ground. Appropriation of new and existing climate policies is key to ensure their implementation. Citizen concern seems to be mounting, thus favouring increasingly ambitious climate regulation, although further action is needed. The current legal and social contexts highlight both transition risks and market opportunities for stakeholders as a function of their climate action.

Recent developments in climate science, legislation, litigation and citizen engagement provide the context in which international climate negotiations took place in Bonn this year. COP23 delivered, as expected, the necessary procedural progress to consider this COP successful. Negotiations advanced on the inclusion of Parties’ preferred options for the development of implementation guidelines (previously known as the Paris rulebook) that are to govern the Paris Agreement. Progress was also made on evaluating global progress towards our long-term temperature stabilisation target, as the design of the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue (renamed the Talanoa dialogue) was completed. Concrete outcomes were also achieved as regards the Vulnerability Agenda on gender, indigenous peoples, local communities and oceans. Intense negotiations at COP23 helped broker an agreement on agriculture after years of paralysis on this topic. At the request of developing countries, the pre-2020 ambition, an unexpected negotiating issue, was raised to the fore.

COP23: Introducing a new toolkit to help support the Paris Agreement http://www.europeansources.info/record/cop23-introducing-a-new-toolkit-to-help-support-the-paris-agreement/

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