The Net Result Of Bonn Is Lukewarm At Best

- Vijeta Rattani and Shreeshan Venkatesh

THE 23RD session of the Conference of Parties (cop), hosted by Fiji (the first island state to preside cop) and held in Bonn from November 6-17, 2017, was largely-anticipated to be a technical one to continue the progress on making the “rulebook” for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which becomes operational by 2020. It was also the first cop since the Donald Trump administration announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement has a lock-in period of four years and the US technically cannot leave the process before 2020. Besides, in his typical style, President Trump is yet to submit the instrument of withdrawal to the UN to formally kickstart the process, evidently to try and renegotiate the terms of the agreement.

The US’ desire to pull out of the Paris Agreement had no legal or political bearing in the cop negotiations. Civil society groups like the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance objected to US presence in the negotiations, the objections nevertheless were marginalised. It was business as usual in the negotiations as far as the US was concerned. By the end, it had become clear that the US would be impeding consensus in several issues including the critical one of finance and financial accounting of commitments.

Developing countries, on their part, asserted the inaction in the pre-2020 commitments on the part of developed countries in terms of emission reductions and financial assistance of US $100 billion by 2020, including their non-ratification of the Doha Amendment—which was signed in 2012 for raising the ambition of emission cuts but is yet to come into force as 60 signatures are still pending—of Kyoto Protocol. However, the US and the EU jointly opposed the inclusion of pre-2020 climate actions in the Agenda and successfully managed to delay any meaningful conversation until next year.