By Gebru Jember (Chair of the LDC Group) and Manjeet Dhakal
2018 is a crucial year in the climate negotiations. COP23 in Bonn was able to draw the sketch of the Road to Katowice, and now it is important that negotiators get to work to ensure that the journey in the coming months is successfully completed.
In November 2017, the LDC Group with members comprising 47 countries spread across Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean attended the ‘First Island COP’, held under a Fiji Presidency at the seat of the UNFCCC Secretariat. With the mandate to develop and finalise the rules of the Paris Agreement by the end of 2018, the determination shown by governments in Bonn to make substantive progress on the work remaining was very positive. However, there are many areas of the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP), tasked with developing different parts of the rules, which are still seriously lagging behind schedule.
With much work therefore still to be done to finalise the rules by the end of this year, the LDC group will also be reminding other negotiating groups in the lead up to COP24 not to lose sight of the big picture – that all these efforts should ultimately lead to ramping up the next round of emission reduction pledges to put the world on a pathway to limit warming to 1.5°C. Continue reading »
