From negotiation to an implementation forum during the COP

It’s easy to criticise climate COPs: too much talk, not enough action, too many participants, lobbyists and greenwashing, … There is truth behind such criticism, although many often fail to recognise the vital need for the multilateral framework and just how difficult it is to reconcile the diverging but legitimate interests and priorities of almost two hundred countries. What is undisputable is that after almost thirty years of COPs, the climate crisis continues to deepen, and we are way off track. So, we need to ask how we might improve the UNFCCC process to better support delivery. A few suggestions.

A key step would be to finally move away from negotiation as the default modality of work under the COP and its subsidiary bodies. Negotiation was the only way we could develop the overall framework, especially the Paris Agreement, and then reach agreement on the detailed rules and guidelines for implementation. We will continue to need to negotiate to find ways forward on a number of critical issues in the future, as was necessary for the global stocktake in Dubai in 2023, or the new collective quantified goal for finance in Baku last year. Likewise, parties will need to revisit how the detailed rules and guidelines and the many work programmes and constituted bodies are working. But not every issue needs a negotiated outcome at every session.

Simplifying our consideration of many ongoing issues would not require a revolution or a change in the rules. The COP presidency and the SB chairs could indicate their intention to table procedural conclusions for many issues that do not require negotiated outcomes at that session and not set up contact groups or informal consultations on all items.

Would some complain? Undoubtedly. But there would still be plenty of opportunities to consider all issues, just not at every session. An overview schedule of when, every few years, each item would be considered in depth could provide reassurance to any who might be wary of moving to such a system, and in substantive discussions would continue under the work programmes, constituted bodies, etc. The advantage would be to reduce the pressure on workload, especially under the subsidiary bodies, allowing work that does need to move forward at that session more time for informed consideration. And it would open up the possibility of using the outputs of many of these work streams in a way that would be more effective than spending two weeks to get a few lines of heavily negotiated conclusions or decisions that have limited impact in the real world.

One way to do this might be for the presidency to organise an “implementation forum” during the COP session. The idea would be to take the multiple outputs of existing work streams, including the transparency system, the work programmes (such as mitigation and just transition), and the work of the many constituted bodies, and use them as inputs to a process designed to support parties and other actors identify ways to overcome the barriers they encounter in their efforts to develop and implement policies for mitigation and adaptation.

Such an implementation forum could also integrate the presidential action agenda that has taken more and more space during the COPs in recent years. Successive presidencies have organised thematic days and high-level events, some involving leaders, to launch cooperative initiatives addressing a wide range of challenges to climate action. Some of these have been followed up successfully, some unfortunately seem to have been one-off events. There is a huge need for cooperation and collaboration to support implementation, but just as we should now look at rationalising the formal process and reducing the role of negotiation, so we should also seek ways of putting some order into the action agenda, ensuring that it is addressing the real challenges and providing follow-up and continuity across successive conferences and presidencies to get maximum leverage.

Bringing the outputs of formal processes, the collaborative efforts of the action agenda, and the work of the high-level champions together in an implementation forum would change the face of the COP. The implementation forum could maintain the idea of a programme of thematic days throughout the COP, but as well as looking at specific sectors, work could be structured so as to address some of the major challenges to implementation and ways to overcome them, such as identifying policy options, strengthening institutional capacity, overcoming resistance to action, ensuring a just transition, and of course access to affordable and adequate finance and means of implementation. It would give a new relevance to the outputs of the formal work programmes and constituted bodies that could directly inform this work by bringing in lessons from experience and best practice. It would also provide a platform to ensure follow-up of the action agenda initiatives launched by previous conferences and make it more likely that any new initiatives would be valuable.

In parallel, we are going to need better ways to manage and access information on climate action. The existing transparency system has produced an enormous corpus of information over the past few decades, and the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement which is just getting going will be a major source of information on climate action. The different work programmes and bodies have delivered multiple reports and outputs, whilst the Marrakech partnership, the high-level champions have also worked hard to mobilise action by non-state actors. Far too little of this information has been used effectively, and simply finding it is not easy. There is considerable hype around the potential of artificial intelligence to transform our world, and some of that may prove illusory. But extracting meaningful lessons targeted to help overcome specific challenges to climate action from the mass of information that we have on climate action is exactly the sort of challenge to which AI ought to be well-suited. An implementation information portal would be a natural partner to the annual implementation forum and ensure a much higher impact for all the information generated by the UNFCCC processes.