Fiji-in-Bonn: will the ‘Talanoa spirit’ prevail?

Fiji was the first island nation to preside over a climate change Conference of the Parties (COP). Two years after adoption of the Paris Agreement, more than 170 countries are now Parties to the treaty, and have officially registered their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Yet, even if all targets formulated in the NDCs are met, we would see a likely temperature increase of more than 3°C above pre-industrial levels. The emissions gap to scenarios leading to the Paris Agreement objective of ‘well below’ 2°C or 1.5°C remains ‘alarmingly high’ (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 2017). Worryingly, the latest estimates of the Global Carbon Budget (Le Quéré et al., 2017) suggest that the hiatus in the increase of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the past three years may have yielded to resumed growth during 2017. The ‘warm glow’ that had lingered after the landmark adoption and rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement was also dimmed by the announcement (although not unexpected) that the new Trump administration in the US would ‘cease all implementation’ of the Paris Agreement and withdraw from the treaty (White House, 2017). And 2017 was a year that saw violent storms wreak havoc in the Caribbean, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Sierra Leone, Texas and elsewhere.

Against this troubling backdrop, COP 23¹ was held under the Presidency of Fiji, while taking place in Bonn, Germany, as the small island did not have the capacity to host such a large meeting. The COP thus became informally known as ‘Fiji-in-Bonn’. It was predominantly a procedural meeting, with major decisions not expected until COP 24 to be held in 2018 in Poland. The main issues on the table were the work programme to implement the Paris Agreement, pre-2020 ambition, finance, ‘Loss and Damage’ (L&D), and the Facilitative Dialogue, each of which we discuss below. In the face of formidable challenges, countries at COP 23 therefore continued with norm-setting work aimed at ‘strengthening of the multilateral, rules-based regime’ (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], 2011), this time with more of an eye than usual to action outside of the official negotiations. To encourage a spirit of cooperation, Fiji introduced the concept of ‘Talanoa’ – explaining the Pacific tradition of constructive story-telling, finding shared understanding and moving forward together.

There is no doubt that the international climate negotiations need a large dose of Talanoa. While there was much lip-service paid to the Talanoa spirit at Fiji-in-Bonn, COP 23 was a ‘Talanoa-free’ zone in several of the technical negotiations, with little constructive dialogue or focus on solutions. In many ways, COP 23 was marked by the usual positioning and bickering between developed and developing countries – and various groups among them – that has plagued the climate negotiations since their inception.

Discussions in the Ad hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) were focused on the implementation details of the Paris Agreement, the so-called Paris rule-book, which is due to be adopted at COP 24 in 2018. The issue of differentiation continued to be raised strongly, with the Like-Minded Developing Countries (including China) and the Arab Group arguing for a two-part structuring of commitments – between developed and developing countries – that others considered unacceptably ‘bifurcated’. With a strong push for bifurcation in mitigation, virtually no technical work was possible. Finding a more nuanced approach to differentiation had been central in the run up to Paris and shaped both the overall framing of the Agreement, and specific provisions (Rajamani, 2016; Voigt and Ferreira, 2016). It seems, however, that simply moving beyond the Annex I and non-Annex I categories has not resolved all the underlying tensions over the differentiation of commitments between countries and groups.

Developing countries pushing bifurcation may be playing a self-defeating game, notably in relation to transparency. Developing countries may have more to lose from a weak, lowest-common-denominator transparency regime, given wobbles on financing from industrialized countries and the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Has the game changed, so that transparency will become less a way of resolving concerns over uncertain emissions data, and more a way of holding developed country ‘feet to the fire’ on political finance commitments and demanding early progress on emission pledges?

Much work still needs to be done in 2018, if the Paris Agreement rule-book is to be adopted at COP 24. On the one hand, past experience has shown that text can come together quickly, once political issues are resolved. However, in some deeply technical areas, e.g. land-use change, careful design is needed to ensure robust accounting and to avoid loopholes. It is therefore disappointing that the APA concluded its meeting in Bonn without a clear mandate to its Co-Chairs to produce a draft negotiating text. An additional session in 2018, however, is all but agreed, which will provide more negotiating time to complete the rule-book. It will also be an opportunity to consider the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5°C.

Divergence between developed and developing countries was also marked on the issue of pre-2020 ambition. Developing countries expressed two main concerns: that developed countries had not delivered the $100bn per year in climate finance by 2020 first promised in 2009 at Copenhagen, and that the 2012 Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, introducing a second round of emission targets for developed countries, had not yet entered into force. They argued strongly that a focus on increasing ambition could not be limited to post-2020, especially if the world wants to peak emissions by 2020. Discussions were held on ‘global climate action’ – an initiative to boost collaboration between governments and stakeholders to achieve concrete, immediate progress on mitigation – but it appears that prospects of over-compliance in the pre-2020 period remain limited. Countries seem more willing to raise ambition in the medium-term future, but for now, implementing existing pledges according to a robust rule book and some assistance through market mechanisms is the focus. It remains possible that other forms of international cooperation may emerge – but they would have to find ways in which the sum of collective action is somehow more than its parts (Bakhtiari, 2017).

Procedurally, there was no agenda item for pre-2020 ambition and developed countries resisted calls by the developing countries to add one. In the end, the compromise reached was to introduce additional stock-taking over the next three years, both on pre-2020 emission reductions and two assessments of climate finance (another key sticking point, which we discuss below) (UNFCCC, 2017). UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was also enlisted to help persuade Kyoto Protocol Parties to speed up their ratification of the Doha Amendment. The pressure clearly had some effect – 10 EU members ratified the Doha Amendment during November with the EU as a whole expected to join by the end of the year, seemingly with or without Poland, which has prevented the group from joining up to now. Poland will host the next COP and if it does not want to be called ‘Coaland’ – as some environmental NGOs warned – it will be under great pressure to ratify.

The other major area of disagreement was finance. Funding is often a sticking point in negotiations, so COP 23 was hardly exceptional in this respect, although there were, perhaps, a particularly large number of agenda items relating to climate finance. A major controversy arose over how developed countries should communicate their financial projections of the public climate finance they intend to make available to assist developing countries. This issue came to be known as ‘9.5’, referring to a new legal obligation created under Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement. Somehow, the word ‘modalities’ seemed to acquire connotations of a straitjacket. Developed countries feared that establishing modalities would interfere with the budgeting processes of their Treasuries. However, modalities could take the form of non-intrusive soft guidance, for example, good practice guidance, which enables better reporting and more transparent information. The resistance appeared to be more political than technical, with most developed countries arguing modalities would constrain them in a manner they believed was not consistent with understandings in Paris. The ‘9.5 issue’ kept negotiators up late at night beyond the formal end of COP 23, which seems to be something negotiators now feel compelled to do, on some issue or other, at almost every COP. The outcome on ‘9.5’ essentially was to continue the discussion.

Another flash-point around finance was the Adaptation Fund. In an island COP, funding of adaptation had particularly high political importance. This fact was underlined in the run-up to COP 23 when Fiji became the first emerging market to issue a sovereign green bond to help fund adaptation and resilience (World Bank, 2017). The Adaptation Fund was originally created under the Kyoto Protocol, with resources generated in part from a share of proceeds from the sale of certified emission reductions issued under the Clean Development Mechanism (CMP, 2007). In that way, it created a financial link between mitigation projects in developing countries and funding for adaptation. A decision was needed by the Kyoto governing body to confirm that the Adaptation Fund ‘shall serve’ the Paris Agreement. Negotiations were sometimes fraught. Although almost everyone agreed that the Adaptation Fund should serve the Paris Agreement in principle, developed countries were reluctant to actually commit and give up this negotiating card. The decision was eventually agreed, sending an important positive signal on funding adaptation. However, the Adaptation Fund’s expenditure between 2010-17 has only totalled $462 million, while UNEP (2016) estimates that the cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries could rise to between $280 and $500 billion per year by 2050. The estimated future need is three orders of magnitude larger than current funding levels.

And that is before considering funding of L&D. L&D is the situation when societies can no longer adapt to impacts as their resilience – ability to bounce back – is overwhelmed. Think of a hurricane wiping out 50% of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP); the challenge faced is no longer one of adaptation, but how to deal with what has been lost and damaged. Vulnerable countries pushed hard for progress on L&D at COP 23. Islands and other particularly vulnerable countries facing an almost existential threat need support beyond their own resources. Yet developed countries feared that recognition of L&D could lead to litigation. In Paris, the inclusion of Article 8 on L&D in the Agreement was only made possible by including in the accompanying decision the provision that the Article ‘does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation’. But not all funding to address L&D creates future liability or amounts to compensation. Funding of L&D could, for example, be subject to replenishment under the control of donors. Researchers are reviewing various options, including a levy on airline travel and risk transfer approaches (e.g. see Sharma 2017; Roberts et al. 2017). Negotiations on funding for L&D at COP 23, however, were mostly blocked by concerns about committing to any amount additional to $100 billion, the figure agreed to in Copenhagen in 2009 for overall financial support to developing countries.

Not all areas were ‘Talanoa-free’ zones. The Paris decision called for a ‘Facilitative Dialogue’ in 2018, to review progress to date and pave the way to stronger ambition in the next round of NDCs. Delegates at COP 23 agreed that the Dialogue should be conducted according to the ‘solutions-oriented’ and non-confrontational approach of Talanoa, renaming it the Talanoa Dialogue to reinforce the point. Three questions will now structure the Talanoa Dialogue leading up to COP 24: ‘Where are we? Where do we want to go? and How do we get there?’ (UNFCCC, 2017).

On agriculture, a breakthrough was made in discussions in the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). After six long years of talking past each other, sufficient trust was built among negotiators to enable progress. Technical work on matters such as soil carbon and fertility, assessment of adaptation and resilience, and better livestock management will now be taken forward.

Discussions on markets in the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) made more progress than in the past. After long years of ideological debates for and against markets under a framework for various approaches, the Paris Agreement included Article 6, which provides for market mechanisms, ‘internationally transferred mitigation outcomes’ (ITMOs, Paris-speak for carbon credits) and a framework for non-market approaches. Now both seem able to go ahead. Vigorous negotiations on technical details at COP 23 produced text on Article 6 that is well structured, compared to the results of negotiations on some other agenda items.

Participation got a boost at COP 23: in the spirit of Talanoa, Fiji-in-Bonn included work on the Gender Action Plan, highlighting the role of women in climate action. A local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ platform was also launched, and it was agreed that non-party stakeholders will be able to make inputs to the global stocktake, which will review progress in 2023. The extent to which marginalized groupings will have a real voice remains to be seen – starting with the Talanoa Dialogue in 2018.

Fiji-in-Bonn was not only the first island COP, it was also the first COP since US President Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement (White House, 2017). Fears of US obstruction at COP 23 were partly allayed by the presence of several ‘old hands’ on the delegation, which in the end largely kept a low profile and maintained longstanding negotiating positions. An oft-commented feature of COP 23 was the apparent presence of two US delegations: the subdued, official delegation, and an unofficial one loosely comprising the representatives of individual states, cities and businesses, with a US Climate Alliance in Bonn seeking ‘to reassure global leaders of American leadership on climate change’ (US Climate Alliance, 2017). Michael Bloomberg even demanded an official seat at the negotiating table for this ‘coalition of the willing’, while an African NGO called for the official delegation to be barred (Climate Home News, 2017). The contrast in Bonn between the official US stance as expounded by President Trump intent on withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and the firm commitment to the Paris goals proclaimed by so many US sub-national actors, was striking.

With US leadership abandoned, will the rest of the world be able to muster the ambition and political will needed to achieve the Paris goals? Where will leadership to accelerate the low-carbon transition come from? Within the UNFCCC process, can the Talanoa spirit generate trust to develop rules that are robust to a fragmenting world? Or will most of the action happen outside of the process – and how will we know whether our collective effort is enough? Is it possible that we will see an international climate process shaped not by one hegemon, but by collective and shared leadership? Might there be a space for polycentric approaches to climate change (Ostrom, 2009)? That all remains to be seen. What is clear is that leadership cannot simply be claimed, it must be earned. Given the scale of the development-climate challenge, we must first do what we said. And then all need to do more.

Acknowledgements

Climate Policy has a tradition of publishing editorials reflecting on COPs, which began with our Founding Editor Michael Grubb. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Climate Policy journal, including joint Editor-in-Chief Frank Jotzo and Associate Editors Navroz Dubash, Axel Michaelowa and Charlotte Streck, for valuable comments on a draft of this editorial. The views expressed remain entirely our responsibility.

Notes

1 Although commonly referred to by the shorthand “COP 23”, the Bonn Conference also included the 13th session of the COP, serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 13), the resumed first session of the COP, serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 1.2), the fourth part of the first session of the Ad hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) and sessions of the standing subsidiary bodies.