When the dust finally settled in Katowice in the wee hours of Sunday morning, December 16 – two days after COP24 was slated to conclude – a fair chunk of the needed Paris Agreement implementation guidelines were agreed on in COP decision.

Much was written about the outcomes right after. All point to the progress in providing detail for all of the Articles listed on the PAWP, except Article 6 on cooperative (markets) mechanisms. C2ES acknowledged the Rulebook achievement as “pivotal” while noting concern that the politics surrounding the COP’s tepid acceptance of the IPCC 1.5C report might signal the lack of high-level political leadership for putting them into practice. The World Resources Institute (WRI) concluded that “while not perfect, the Rulebook provides an important foundation for countries to move forward and operationalize the Paris Agreement.”  Carbon Brief noted that “countries wrestled with the ‘four-dimensional spaghetti’ of competing priorities as they clashed over how to recognize the IPCC special report on 1.5C ” and use those findings to spur greater ambition in the 2020 NDC revisions. The Wuppertal Institute saw the Rulebook as helping the Paris Agreement ship move out of dry dock – finally.

Here is my take on the three key Paris Agreement articles and their attendant COP24 guidelines, and how Parties “got to not no” on them.

The Article 4 guidelines on mitigation aspects of NDCs come in four decisions.  Decision 4/CMA.1 conveys the NDC information that Parties are expected to use when making mitigation pledges, beginning with their 2020 updates.  Annex 1 of the decision details the kinds of information required “to facilitate clarity, transparency, and understanding (CTU),” like base lines, time frames, scope of coverage, and methodologies. Annex 2 mandates using IPCC emissions accounting guidance,unless it cannot be applied to that kind of NDC pledge. Decision 5/CMA.1 sets out how to use the public registry for recording these NDCs.  Getting to not no on these guidelines was relatively easy.  On the technical level, most of these categories of information have been under discussion since COP19 and have been used under the Kyoto Protocol.  So few surprises, and sufficient time to get used to and make comprises on some.  On the political level, given that Parties retain the right to self determine what kind of mitigation pledge they make, the technical component form follows the nationally determined function … meaning that the pages of CTU information required ONLY apply once a Party makes a pledge that invokes them.  Again, given that Protocol countries are accustomed to gathering and communicating this kind of information, they had little to oppose.  Given that almost all developing countries made sectoral pledges, not economy wide ones, most of the CTU categories either don’t apply or are not formidable.  Hopefully this is a case where consensus means that behavioral norms are actually in line with the guidelines.

In contrast, Parties did not agree on common time frames for their mitigation pledges at COP24 in Decision 6/CMA.1.  While the Paris Agreement specifies that NDCs will be revised every five years, the timeframes for mitigation commitments made within them remain nationally determined.  For example, the US INDC pledges a 26-28% reduction by 2025 based on a 2005 baseline, while the EU’s 40% reduction is by 2030 and based on a 1990 baseline.  Consequently the Parties returned to the issue at SB50, where they again did not come up with a recommendation for COP25.   This negotiations will continue at SB51 during the first week of the COP.  What might be the consensus position on this one?  The range of options currently on the table indicates disagreement over what conceptually is the right timeframe to achieve both ambitious and feasible change, and how fast to start implementation.  Hence we see competing proposals to require all Parties to adopt a 5-year timeframe; a 10-year timeframe; have the choice between the two; and even mandate two successive 5-year timeframes (5+5).  As for implementation, there are calls for sooner (in 2025) and later (2031 and 2041 onward). At this point, it is unclear which approach will prevail in Santiago. Parties could not agree on submissions and technical reports on this point during the next six months, so it is hard to see how compromise positions will form before then.

The Article 13 guidelines on transparency get the award for length: Decision 18/CMA.1 comes in at a whopping 34 pages!  We know that knowledge is power.  While sovereign countries always seek information on others, they are careful when divulging their own. Careful wording takes more pages.

Within the internal logic of the UNFCCC, the length is also testimony to how MRV (measuring, reporting, and verification) has evolved over time.  The general requirements outlined in the UNFCCC produced data, but not in a way that helped measure progress.  Hence the Biennial Reports and Biennial Update Reports mandated later by COP16 decisions.  This change led to the Paris Agreement’s Biennial Transparency Report (BTR), which Parties will begin submitting in 2024, and will likely evolve to be the sole report (with national inventories inside or alongside them).

Another reason for length derives from Article 13’s negotiation over the course of 2015 into a two-part reporting system:  one on transparency of action (e.g. mitigation and adaptation) and one on transparency of support (e.g. finance, technology, capacity-building). That second part was hard fought.  Since 1994, developing countries perceived chronic shortfalls on these UNFCCC “means of implementation” commitments.  As a compromise, they negotiated their willingness to take on new mitigation obligations with developed countries’ willingness to be more transparent about how they provide support.

While long and detailed, the transparency guidelines are organized in a straight forward fashion, first giving an overview of BTR requirements in Part I before providing lists of the kinds of information and methodologies required for making a national inventory of emissions and removals in Part II.  Part III details the information needed to report on progress made on NDC pledges, which mostly  mirrors that described in the NDC guidelines. Part IV lists the optional information on adaptation that may be included in a NDC. Parts V and VI address the provision by developed countries and the receipt by developing countries of support, respectively, via finance, technology, and capacity building.  Guidelines on the technical expert review of these submissions are outlined in Part VII and multilateral review of them by the Parties is covered in Part VIII.

While the end product seems tidy and matter-of-fact, the negotiation of them during COP24 occupied most of the available meeting time.  This kind of detailed reporting – most of which most developing countries have not prepared for – was ground zero for advocating for different requirements for countries of different development status.  While LDCs and SIDs continue to be treated with “flexibility,” developing countries are really not. Almost all of the transparency provisions begin with the undifferentiated label of “Parties.” While developing countries may exercise flexibility “in light of their capacities” on some aspects of reporting, they must transparently show where and why they are doing so and communicate when their capacity will improve.  To help them meet these timelines, developed country Parties have pledge additional capacity-building support for transparency, via the CBIT fund located at the GEF, which was created at COP21.   A uniform transparency system was a red line for the US and EU delegations.  To get to not no required giving up an outside limit on how long developing countries could exercise this flexibility – and funding this kind of capacity building.

At SB50, the focus on the transparency framework’s mechanics continued with negotiations on common reporting tables and tabular formats for this information.  The Parties left Bonn with pages of ideas, an invitation to submit more, and a decision to continue negotiating the specifics at SB51 with dedicated time for discussing how exactly to put those flexibility options into practice.

The Article 14 guidelines on the global stocktake (GST) are captured in Decision 19/CMA.1 in a comparatively short 5 pages.  Yet they give a fair amount of detail on both the procedure and data inputs for this collective review of all the Parties progress (or not) on achieving the Article 2 goals, which is set to start in 2023 and continue every five years thereafter. On procedure, the implementation guidelines divide the stocktake into three phases: 1) information collection and preparation, 2) technical assessment of it per the Paris Agreement goals, and 3) using that assessment to inform Parties’ updating of their NDCs to enhance ambition. While the SBI and SBSTA will jointly assist the process, a “technical dialogue” will be convened to help assess both the inputs and outs of the stocktake.  Not surprisingly, inputs will provide information on the current status of emissions and removals, overall NDC progress, adaptation and loss and damage efforts, financial flows, challenges faced by developing countries, good practices, and “fairness considerations.”  Data for these inputs will come from individual NDCs and BTRs; reports from the IPCC, SBI and SBSTA, and relevant constituted UNFCCC bodies; synthesis reports requested of the Secretariat, as well as reports from other UN bodies and regional organizations; and submissions from Parties and observers.  The technical dialogue looks to be an important method for focusing the assessment of evidence-based actions, akin to the structured expert dialogue that set the stage for the inclusion of 1.5C in Article 2’s aims and the COP requesting the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C. Perhaps it will be equally skilled in diplomacy, as the GST turns the focus from individual country actions (and inactions) to global action (and inaction)?

Taken together, these three sets of implementation guidelines provide something for everyone yet enough top down in common to drive compromise.

“The Paris Agreement could have died in Katowice,” Li Shuo, head of Greenpeace-China, said in a Rolling Stone article post COP24. “Instead, it lives. The question now is, ‘Who will step up and show some ambition and political leadership?’ ”

Multilateralism aims to forge agreement among countries to solve problems that span sovereign borders. Achieving success requires careful balancing of the number of participants with the strength of their commitments and their willingness to  enforce them.

In tackling climate change, we see this triad playing out differently between the UNFCCC (197 Parties, qualitative and not quantitative commitments, soft enforcement mechanisms), Kyoto Protocol (much smaller group of countries with quantitative mitigation targets reviewed by a compliance committee), and the Paris Agreement (185 Parties pledging both quantitative and qualitative contributions with enhanced transparency requirements to promote accountability). It’s safe to say that getting a multilateral environmental agreement’s structure right isn’t easy.

Ditto on its governance.

The international climate change agreements housed under the UNFCCC operate their brand of multilateralism by consensus.  While the Conference of Parties (COP) need not achieve unanimity, one country or group of countries can stop decisions in their tracks by voicing disagreement. Sometimes dissenting views can be managed through diplomatic techniques.  A recent example is the promise of ongoing consultations made by COP21 President Laurent Fabius to Turkey in 2015 in order to gavel the Paris Agreement into being.  Other times they cannot, and the Parties do not come to consensus, as happened in 2009 with COP15’s “Copenhagen Accord.”  Given that the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement Parties achieved consensus on their COP24, CMP14, and CMA1 decisions respectively, it is worth exploring how they got to “not no” in Katowice, Poland.

A first consideration is the motivation to keep climate change multilateralism intact.

Despite the United States’ 2017 threat to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and the anticipation of something similar from the new president of Brazil, the vast majority of Parties want to continue this treaty forum. The European Union states – notably Germany, France, and the UK (still, despite Brexit negotiations) – are making a full court press on putting the Paris Agreement into practice. Why? The EU has invested deeply in these multilateral climate change negotiations since the beginning.  Member countries bore almost the entire load of the Kyoto Protocol mitigation commitments.  While member states continue to tussle internally on when and how to move away from fossil fuels – with COP24 host Poland serving as Exhibit A of a coal-dependent economy dragging its heels – there is no doubt about the EU’s climate change policy direction since the early 2000s.  Whether via carbon markets or renewable energy targets or electric vehicle production prioritization or financial and capacity-building aid to developing countries, EU member states have made significant political and financial investments in climate change multilateralism.

Likewise emerging economies like China and India have moved to the multilateral forefront by bringing developing country interests and concerns to the climate change negotiation table. Along with Brazil and South Africa, they form the BASIC negotiation group that is critical to forging deals.  As industrializing developing countries, they can see the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation commitments from both the economic status they have been and the one that they are growing their economies into. China’s early experiments with regional carbon markets have now manifested nationwide. Its use of renewable energy is growing ahead of its pledged targets.  It is THE largest electric vehicle market in the world, fueled by domestic policies that make it easier for consumers to buy them. India highlights the mitigation impact of its majority Hindu population’s vegetarianism.  It also vies for solar energy bragging rights with China and incentivizes the use of electric vehicles.  By taking domestic mitigation and adaptation actions while also pursuing economic growth, these large developing countries provide leadership for the smaller developing countries who are also industrializing. They also partner with the EU to build multilateral bridges strong enough to withstand unilateral defections.

A second consideration is the structure of the Paris Agreement itself, as explored in this earlier post, and the rules needed to implement it that were the key deliverable of COP24.

Unlike the UNFCCC, in which country parties imposed on themselves only process requirements like collecting and reporting emissions data, the Kyoto Protocol set country-specific emissions caps that would add up to a 5% reduction from 1990 global emission levels. How countries achieved their reductions was up to national governments, in light of the many options embodied in the Protocol. But because only developed countries took on these reduction targets, the Protocol affected the practices of a minority of UNFCCC Party countries who were the historical polluters. By 2005, when the Kyoto Protocol entered into force, China had surpassed the U.S. as the top emitting country, illustrating the growing impact of the emissions from developing countries as they industrialized. The Paris Agreement was specifically designed to include all UNFCCC countries in a mutual system of national “bottom up” pledges governed by a set of international “top down” accountability rules.

It is this treaty language  with its “constructive ambiguities” that the Paris Agreement implementation guidelines must clarify.  Hence the past three years of negotiations under the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP) that focused on some seven Agreement articles (4,6,7,9,13,14,15) and culminated in COP24 decisions that total 100 pages.

Of these seven, the COP24 outcomes – sometimes referred to as the Katowice Rulebook – on three of them merit closer scrutiny, namely Article 4 on NDCs, Article 13 on transparency, and Article 14 on the global stocktake.  The first one focuses on the kinds of mitigation targets countries set for themselves and how to account for their impact.  The second sets the ground rules for regularly reporting on NDC progress. The third holds the entire COP responsible for assessing whether the Paris Agreement parties are achieving the Article 2 goal of keeping the rise in atmospheric temperature to well below 2C degrees.  It is on these three building blocks that current climate change multilateralism is based.  Understanding the details of their implementation guidelines is thus a critical first step to making it work.

Check out my next post that captures key guidelines finalized at COP24 and SB50, and how Parties reached consensus on them.

Copenhagen. Paris.  COP15.  COP21.

These are the most recent international climate change  meetings that everyone knows.  COP15 in Copenhagen marked a low point in multilateral environmental cooperation, with the “back room” deal by the top global emitters not accepted by the 197 Parties who must agree on its actions by consensus at its closing plenary.  Hence the Copenhagen Accords were seen as a political document, not a legal one.

Six years later, after annual negotiation sessions, these same Parties adopted the Paris Agreement, a new treaty under the UNFCCC that was ratified so quickly – only 11 months – that the Parties were caught unprepared with the specific rules on how to implement it. A definite political high point.  Knowing that, the Parties created a work programme to put the necessary pieces of the Paris Agreement puzzle in place.  The deadline for completing it was last December, at COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

In the run up to COP24, Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa described the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP) as “more than a set of rules, it will unleash the power of the Agreement itself.”

How is that?

It’s because 185 Parties – 184 individual countries and the EU – agreed to design the Paris Agreement around three legal obligations intended to harness “bottom up” participation and ambition. These are:

1. pledging nationally determined contributions or NDCs,
2. transparently and regularly reporting their progress on them, and
3. collectively taking stock on how current NDCs are achieving the goal of keeping global temperature rise “well below” 2C.

Through the NDCs, individual countries commit in writing what they will do to mitigate their GHG emissions and adapt to locked-in climate change impacts.  Developed countries – the ones whose industrialization caused this warming – also say in their NDCs how they will help other, less developed countries to mitigate and adapt through financial, technology, and capacity-building support. The range of NDC pledges reflects the range of countries’ development status.The good news is that so many countries filed them.  The task for COP24 was agreeing on implementation guidelines that promote a uniform understanding of them.

Then, through an “enhanced transparency framework,” countries file reports via a publicly available UNFCCC portal on specific actions taken.  For mitigation, this means totaling up how many GHG emissions have been reduced or sequestered, by gas and sector.  These kinds of calculations have been required of developed country parties to the Kyoto Protocol for over a decade.  Given the learning curve for other countries, the precise contents of these reports and whether all countries will make them every two year were the key facets of these Paris Agreement guidelines.

Finally, the global stocktake or GST serves as the linchpin for these individual country efforts.  Every five years all the Paris Agreement parties will collectively assess whether their individual contributions, when added up, have been enough to meet the Paris Agreements goals of staying well below 2C, and mid 21st century carbon neutrality.  The October IPCC special report on 1.5C underscored the existential importance of meeting the more ambitious goal expressed in Article 2 of the Agreement. So agreeing on what information should inform the GST and how to conduct it were the core implementation guidelines negotiated at COP24.

So how did it come out?  See my next post for my view on it.

*****

Before you do, consider Espinosa’s comments about the IPCC 1.5C report at the pre-COP.

When opening the meeting, she underscored how warming poses risks to all of humanity and why action at COP24 in response is critical.

“Let us never forget that climate change, if left unadressed, will take almost every single challenge humanity faces and make it worse.

It will destabilize the global economy, which will affect all nations. By 2030, the loss of productivity caused by a hotter world could cost the global economy 2 trillion dollars.

It will create conflict over resources and impact migration. It’s estimated that climate change could displace between 50 million and 200 million people by 2050.

Worse, it will result in incredible suffering and hardship for people and societies throughout the world.

But addressing climate change, and committing to a low-emissions future—one that is more resilient and sustainable—offers incredible opportunity.

It’s not just an opportunity to do the right thing—it’s an opportunity to completely transform the way we produce and consume, and the way we live.

And that means new markets, new businesses, and, for so many people throughout the world, new jobs…quality jobs…a just transition to a future that is just for all people.

As Secretary-General Guterres so clearly put it, the idea that tackling climate change is expensive and could harm economic growth is nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true.

The International Labour Organization reports that the green economy could create 24 million new jobs globally by 2030.

Ladies and gentlemen, incredible opportunity exists if we embrace a low-carbon future and unleash the power of the Paris Agreement.

But we must first achieve our very specific goals at COP24.

I ask all of you to take one message back to your countries: that people of the world want us to achieve results at COP24 and we intend to reach those goals.”