The way here and the way forward: negotiating a new climate agreement

by nathan thanki At the end of an unseasonably warm week in Bonn, the sun set on yet another round of UNFCCC (climate change) negotiations. The session, quieter than the end of year COP (Conference of the Parties) jamboree, has only dealt with one negotiating track—the "ADP." The ADP, or Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (there's a reason we use acronyms), is a...

US submits views on future climate agreement

by nathan thanki Since the Durban round of UN climate talks in 2011, governments have been struggling towards an eventual global agreement to address climate change (ideally, some say they're just negotiating the establishment of more markets). The negotiation process, named the "ADP" (the D stands for Durban) is mandated to conclude in Paris in December 2015 with some kind of outcome. The exact...

Days 12 & 13 Policy Updates: Muddles and Huddles

by Earth in Brackets team and friends Negotiations in Warsaw carried on essentially non-stop from Wednesday morning until Saturday night, with many delegates not sleeping for at least the final 48 hours. There were three concurrent issues being negotiated over the course of Friday and Saturday: finance, loss and damage, and the ADP draft text. Finance and loss and damage were in closed contact...

Days 10-11 Policy Updates: The Storm Before the Storm

By Nathan Thanki with input from Katie O'Brien, Anjali Appadurai, and others. Photos by Rachel Wells In short, the negotiations are falling apart. We say that with utmost respect for the work being done by our negotiator allies and friends among civil society observers. It is not their fault. Nor is it the fault of the UNFCCC per se, though its Secretariat must shoulder some blame. The...

“You have never seen a coalition like this before”

by Lara Shirley and J. Taggart Wass Today, in an unprecedented show of solidarity between all elements of civil society, there was a massive walkout of COP19.  The action involved 800 members of civil society protesting the complete lack of progress in this year’s conference. The move was a culmination of many different frustrations: the corporate takeover of the UNFCCC space, the continued...