The new ADP text, for 5-year olds

20 Octobre 2015

Read the original article at: http://adoptanegotiator.org/the-new-adp-text-for-5-year-olds/

With new trackers Fariya Abubakari and Domoina Ratovozanany.

The time of the month has arrived: we’re starting another round of climate negotiations (this time in Bonn, Germany) and this time we only have five days before the start of COP21 in Paris. Will the ADP move forward?

What is the ADP?

ADP is the acronym for the so-called Ad-hoc Durban Platform, a body created in 2011 to rescate the Climate Talks from themselves, two years after the failure in Copenhagen. In the post-Copenhagen world, the ADP was a life-boat for securing new global protocol to reduce our emissions.

Have you heard about the promised Paris Agreement? Well, ADP is tasked on making it happen. Tough luck.

There’s a new draft, right?

Yes, yet another one. It’s substantially more condensed than other versions.

The previous one was about 80 pages long, and this one is reduced significantly to only 20, in a drastic effort by the facilitators (called co-chairs) to move things forward. This is how we imagine the co-Chairs right now:

Chop-chop!

Thing is, many crucial elements were dropped in this paragraph-cutting. A vast group of countries believe way too many parts are missing and over 130 parties from the G77+China are demanding either a new draft or including their ideas on the current text.

It seems Monday will see a new draft.

Yes, Kevin, now.

Navigating this draft.

How to read this? Although it might seem pure gibberish at first, most of the topics are someway ordinary: money, emissions, adaptation, countries, goals and bureaucracy.

The first 9 pages are what the facilitators of the process (called the co-Chairs) propose the legal agreement would look like. This is called the Draft Agreement. From the tenth page to the first half of the sixteenth, the co-chairs outline a Draft Decision or what the countries might agree to after the negotiations. Every COP has a decision and even though this year’s is very important, it fades in comparison to the Agreement.

Finally, from mid-page 16 on is a Draft Decision, but solely on what’s called “Workstream 2”. As the Paris Agreement would be enforced after 2020, this Workstream 2 was created to define actions before that date.

In the whole document, the [brackets] mean there’s no consensus on a topic. As you might see, there’s a big fat bracket right at the start, which implies nothing is agreed upon.

First pages: The Agreement.

Let’s break down some key elements of this agreement, now neatly divided into articles. There’s a preamble and a thin introductory article, before heading into the meatier stuff.

Article 2: is all about our intentions. Obviously, we’re all (supposed to be) looking for a low-carbon economy with more resilient societies. AKA: less fossil fuels/deforestation and less chances of climate change harming us. Something to look out here is the temperature goal, since 2°C and 1.5°C are both there and countries must decide which one will make the final cut.
Article 3: highlights the long term goal, the INDC (Intended nationally determined contribution) of each country for reducing carbon emissions. Crucially, the ambitious option of “zero-emissions” goal has vanished from this version.
Article 4: develops how we plan to deal with the impacts of climate change, increasing resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change. Each country has to conceive a national plan detailing their priorities and their needs. The need of an international cooperation and the recognition of the particular vulnerabilities of LDCs and Small Island developing States (SIDS) were pointed out.
Article 5: picks out the acknowledgement that developed countries should assist developing countries in the actions against non-unavoidable impacts of climate change, “loss and damage”. But it’s sliiiiim. While adaptation and mitigation have 10+ bulletpoints in their articles, this one only has three lines.

Article 6: deals with a critical issue, the climate finance. Here are discussed: the scale of the mobilization of finance by 2020 to support developing countries with respect to both mitigation and adaptation, the desirability of a wide variety of finance sources, and the financial mechanism. Notably, the $100 billion yearly global climate finance goal for post-2020 has its own bracket.
Articles 7 & 8: are about the tools and means, technologies transfer and capacity building, that may support the implementation of the mitigation and adaptation actions, particularly in developing countries
Articles 9 to 20: focus on the implementation of the agreement (secretariat, bodies and institutional arrangements, amendments, etc.).
- Article 10: a somewhat weak reference to the ex-ante review, now called global stocktaking. In plain English, this is a process where pledges are reviewed to assess if the humanity is collectively doing enough to save itself or not. It should be guided by “the best available science”.

Yeah right, Matt Damon.

Decision.

The draft decision would sum up the Paris COP, and therefore include a wide range of UN legal jargon, such as “acknowledges that…”, “requests the…”, “welcomes the…” and the occasional “decides to…”.

Among the issues included here are:

The decision to finally adopt an Agreement under the Climate Convention (the UNFCCC). For those nostalgic, check out page 10, I.6: it finally “terminates” the ADP after it fulfilled its mission.
The creation of an IPC (Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee) to pave the way for the entry into force of this Agreement.
There’s a cool option in point II: have a dialogue prior to 2020 where countries can further discuss their INDC. Naturally, there’s also an option to have none of that.
Some details regarding mitigation, adaptation and finance on the Agreement and another slim mention to Loss and Damage (although the co-Chair admit it’s gaining momentum).
Human rights, which found its place here but not (yet) in the drafted agreement.

The Workstream keeps a low-profile, with not that many changes and naturally overshadowed by the other parts of the document.

So, let’s see how Monday unfolds. Judging by these previous days, negotiators will be harsh on the co-chairs non-paper.

We’ll keep you posted. If you wish to learn more about the legal procedures of the UNFCCC, check David Tong’s awesome webinar here. Carbon Brief’s Sophie Yeo wrote an awesome piece about this draft, in case you’re craving for more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a journalist based in San José, Costa Rica. His first COP experience was Warsaw 2013, where he tracked the negotiations along with reporters from four continents in the Climate News Mosaic project. He writes for several local and international media outlets about sustainable development, human rights and glocal stories. Give him a bicycle and he shall move the world.