Briefing in the run-up to COP 23
Uniting for Climate Action
A scant two weeks before COP23 begins in Bonn, political and scientific experts highlighted current challenges and briefed more than 200 guests at the Federal Environment Ministry in Berlin on the present state of climate negotiations.
Work has started on implementing the Paris Agreement. The treaty entered into force in record time, and it’s now vital to maintain the political momentum for implementation and to push ahead on technical details.
Fiji is the first ever small island state to hold a COP Presidency. As a consequence, this year’s climate negotiations will focus on the concerns and needs of the particularly vulnerable and least developed countries.
The COP23 negotiations will be more technical in nature than some previous rounds have been, and are intended to lay the groundwork for the decisions to be taken at COP24 in Poland. The aim now is to flesh out the Paris rules and to take steps to prepare the Facilitative Dialogue 2018 and the first Global Stocktake in 2023.
America’s announcement that it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement has however given the Conference considerable political significance and means that it will attract major media attention. An unequivocal message thus has to go out from COP23: the Paris Agreement is not up for negotiation. Working together, shoulder by shoulder, the Parties want to make real progress in implementing the Agreement.
Germany has a special role to play this year as technical host, supporting Fiji and the UNFCCC Secretariat in staging the Conference.