The climate summit in Katowice (COP24) concluded today with the approval of the rulebook that will make it possible to implement the Paris Agreement.
December 15, 2018- The climate summit in Katowice (COP24) concluded today with the approval of the rulebook that will make it possible to implement the Paris Agreement. These rules that will govern the operation of the Agreement will make it possible to measure, within a framework of common transparency, the efforts to fight climate change, adapt to its impacts and finance that countries have committed to make.
The Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who led the Spanish delegation and was chosen as facilitator of the negotiations, has valued the agreement adopted as “very important”: “All the countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement have agreed on what are those development rules that allow us to make it fully operational and managing that process of learning and trust that will lead us to meet the ambition of to have a safe and decarbonised world by the end of the century”.
Ribera stressed that this regulatory package “regulates issues as different as how to anticipate and how to monitor financing; what are the obligations we assume in terms of adaptation; how to reflect in national contributions an increase in ambition on mitigation or, most importantly, the heart of the package, how to report and use transparency systems as a fundamental tool to gain confidence in our ability to act on climate issues”.
Despite acknowledging that it has not been possible to make progress on carbon market mechanisms on the basis of a common UN system and that it has not been possible to incorporate more ambitious targets in view of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ribera stressed that “the political message that comes out of this meeting is very positive”. “At a time when the international community is finding it very difficult on the ground to advance the multilateral agenda, when some political leaders boast of their lack of trust and their willingness to break with the international community, the will to continue working cooperatively so that it is through the multilateral system that the great global challenges are addressed,” Added.
These are the main points of the agreement adopted in Katowice:
MITIGATION GUIDELINES
Climate change mitigation is a central element of the Paris Agreement. The fact that the vast majority of Convention countries have submitted emission limitation or reduction targets under the Agreement is unprecedented.
The document adopted today at COP24 establishes common technical rules to ensure that the commitments presented by countries comply with the requirements established in Paris (progressive, ambitious, with leadership from developed countries, etc.).
As an example of the information to be submitted together with mitigation targets, countries should report the sectors included in the mitigation target, the gases or the reference year against which they will measure their mitigation progress.
PARIS AGREEMENT TRANSPARENCY FRAMEWORK
The agreed rulebook establishes for the first time a common monitoring system so that each country can measure the progress of its climate change mitigation, adaptation and financing measures.
This system will allow countries, for the first time, to report following common guidelines for all, but with certain flexibilities for developing countries that need it, depending on their different capacities.
This information, which will be presented in a biennial transparency report, will include:
- An inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and removals, following the same IPCC Guidelines and common metrics.
- Monitoring progress in climate change mitigation in accordance with the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted by each country to the UN climate change convention, with a robust system of indicators and accounting.
- The vulnerabilities and impacts of climate change, as well as information on adaptation measures implemented by countries, and information on the risks associated with loss and damage caused by climate change.
- Support provided by countries (for the first time, in addition to developed countries, other donor countries will report on the support provided) and information by developing countries on support received and funding needs.
The transparency framework will promote continuous improvement of information through the technical review process, which will identify areas for improvement where capacity building in developing countries is needed, and the multilateral process that facilitates the assessment of progress. During this process, countries will answer questions from other countries, and present the information contained in their biennial transparency reports in a public session.
Biennial transparency reports, which will be submitted in accordance with these rules, are essential to be able to analyse progress towards the global objectives set by the Paris Agreement, as they will provide fundamental information on the evolution of greenhouse gas emissions at the global level, adaptation actions and financial flows.
For this reason, these transparency rules are considered the backbone of the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
BALANCE GLOBAL
In addition, the agreed regulatory framework has set out how the mechanism will operate to allow countries to revise their periodic climate change commitments upwards. This mechanism, known in English as Global Stocktake, will make it possible to assess every five years where countries are in order to achieve the objective to which the Paris Agreement aspires: to avoid an average increase in the average global temperature of more than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, and to do everything possible so that it does not exceed 1.5ºC. ensuring the coherence of financial flows with low-emission and resilient development, and adaptation to impacts.
The first Global Balance will be made in 2023 and, from that date, it will be carried out every five years.
FINANCING
The rulebook sets out reporting obligations on climate finance forecasts from developed countries to developing countries, strengthening reporting and providing predictability on financial flows.
This information, which will be qualitative and quantitative as far as possible, should be reported biennially, starting in 2020, on the basis of a range of reporting elements including indicative estimates, details on programmes, sectors and countries, plans to increase and mobilize funding, etc.
It has also been decided to establish an online portal to collect this information, and to give the mandate to the Secretariat of the Convention for its analysis, which will be part of the inputs to the Global Stocktake.
CLIMATE FINANCE INFORMATION
The text sets out the modalities for reporting on climate finance provided by developed countries to developing countries. These modalities, which have been integrated as one of the elements of the Paris Agreement Transparency Framework, are more detailed than those already in place to carry out this exercise and refer to information such as:
- Total public financing provided, disaggregated between bilateral and multilateral contributions, and between mitigation and adaptation; to which sectors, to which countries, regions; mobilized private financing; how to avoid double counting; o Progression of funding.
- Training actions and support for training activities and technology development and transfer in developing countries.
ADAPTATION FUND
Previous summits had already decided that the Adaptation Fund, which falls under the Kyoto Protocol, would serve the Paris Agreement, and the procedural issues to articulate this fact were agreed in Katowice.
At COP24, it was decided that the Adaptation Fund will start serving the Paris Agreement from 2019, once the outstanding institutional arrangements are agreed. With regard to the sources of funding for the Fund, the Fund will continue to be funded by voluntary contributions and a fee to be applied to market-based instruments.
In addition, during the climate summit in Katowice, many developed countries announced new commitments of financial contributions to the fund, in the order of 128 million euros.
CARBON MARKETS
The texts related to the cooperative approaches set out in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement will be part of a work programme to continue next year with the technical discussions on this matter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE IPCC REPORT
The adopted document recognises the role of the IPCC in providing the scientific basis for countries to adopt climate change policies and calls on all States to take into account the results of the recent Special Report on 1.5°C in the negotiations.
TALANOA’S DIALOGUE
The document notes the concern about the increase in climate impacts and recognises the urgency of increasing countries’ ambition in mitigation, adaptation and financing.
The COP24 Decision reflects the work that has been carried out over the last year in the context of the Talanoa Dialogue, a forum in which both countries and social partners have assessed collective progress towards the global goals of the Paris Agreement, and provided information for the preparation of the next national contributions (NDCs). that countries must submit in 2020.
The text welcomes the discussions and documents generated throughout the year in the context of the Talanoa Dialogue and invites countries to consider them when preparing their next national contributions and enhancing ambition between now and 2020.
SPAIN AT COP24
During COP24, Spain has joined the Silesian Declaration for a Just and Solidarity-based Transition, which commits governments to the creation of quality employment in emission reduction actions and in climate change adaptation plans; the Declaration for Electromobility to promote innovative and sustainable transport models, the Forests for Climate Declaration, which calls on States to conserve and increase naturalCO2 sinks, and the Declaration for greater climate ambition of the High Ambition Coalition.
In addition, Spain has announced at COP24 that it will hold a workshop on climate change and oceans in April 2019, prior to the presentation of the IPCC report on this matter; and has celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Ibero-American Network of Climate Change Offices (RIOCC), of which 22 countries in the region are members.
Teresa Ribera has also held bilateral meetings with her counterparts from Argentina, Germany, Cuba, Chile, among others; with the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol; or with the president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Hoesung Lee.
