Bonn Voyage: A Meeting to Keep the Paris Agreement Afloat

Representatives from virtually every nation on Earth gathered in Bonn, Germany, on Monday to push ahead with implementing a landmark global climate agreement, in spite of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in June to withdraw the United States from it. The top goal of the Bonn meeting is to develop a “rule book” for tracking and facilitating each nation’s progress in reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions under the Paris Agreement, which was crafted in 2015. Every country in the world has signed the agreement except for Syria. Update: Syria announced its intention on Tuesday to sign the agreement, which makes the United States the only country on Earth planning to opt out.

For the time being, the U.S. remains part of the Paris deal, because the agreement’s rules stipulate that no nation can finalize a withdrawal sooner than November 2020. As in past U.N. climate meetings, the U.S. is sending a delegation with experienced negotiators to Bonn. What’s unclear is how much of a say they’ll have in the outcomes—especially in arguing for U.S.-favorable provisions, given the announced departure from the agreement.

The two-week gathering in Bonn, nicknamed COP23, is the 23rd annual Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was adopted in 1992 and signed by U.S. President George H.W. Bush and other world leaders. The UNFCCC mandates that world governments act to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The UNFCCC is the basis for all subsequent UN action on climate change, including the Kyoto Protocol, launched in 1997, and the Paris Agreement, hammered out in 2015. President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998, but it was rejected 95-0 by the U.S. Senate. The only U.N. members that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol are the United States, Andorra, and South Sudan.

It’s ironic that President Trump sees the Paris Agreement as a rotten deal for the U.S., because each nation’s commitments are purely voluntary pledges—a compromise that was engineered in large part to keep the United States on board. The U.S. is also part of a preexisting pledge from the 2009 COP meeting in Copenhagen for the world’s developed nations to mobilize $100 billion from public and private sources for a Green Climate Fund. The fund is designed to help developing nations adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions. In June, Trump announced that the U.S. would stop participating in the fund; by then, the U.S. had contributed $1 billion of its $3 billion pledge. (There is also an UNFCCC mechanism that addresses “loss and damage” from climate change in developing countries, although rich nations have not yet agreed to any compensation along these lines.)

As it stands now, the Paris Agreement would fall painfully short of its stated goals. Even if every nation were to meet its current Paris pledge (including the U.S.), the world will get only about a third of the way toward meeting the Paris goal of keeping global temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Thus, the importance of this year’s efforts to settle on a rule book for verifying and stepping up pledges; those rules are due to be finalized next year. 

Figure 1. From left to right, German environment minister Barbara Hendricks; Richard Lutz, chairman of the German railway operator Deutsche Bahn; and Fiji climate ambassador Deo Deo Saran arrive to take a special high-speed 'Train to Bonn' on Saturday, November 4, 2017 in Berlin. Although this year’s COP is taking place in Germany, the presiding nation is Fiji—the first time a small island nation has held that role. Image credit: Maurizio Gambarini/AFP/Getty Images.

What to watch for at the Bonn meeting

Unlike the past eight COP meetings, the U.S. delegation will not be headed by a special envoy for climate change. That position, filled by Todd Stern since 2009, was abolished in August as part of a broader cutback on special envoys. Instead, the U.S. delegation will be led by Thomas Shannon, undersecretary of state for political affairs. The U.S. State Department did not conduct a pre-COP briefing, which was routine in past years. In addition, Deutsche Welle reported that the U.S. is the only developed nation not sponsoring a pavilion at the Bonn meeting, the first such U.S. absence in COP history.

"I think the bottom line is that [U.S.] federal representation is reduced, and any public statements they have will likely be limited,” said Samantha Basile, a doctoral student in climate science at the University of Michigan (UM). Basile is in Bonn this week as a part of a UM delegation of ten students (each attending for one of the two weeks) and one faculty member.

While the diplomats from each nation take center stage at each COP gathering, there are many thousands of others observing the meeting and participating in a swarm of side events. These include local and state officials as well as staff from many dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that carry out a smorgasbord of climate-change-related work. It’s become increasingly evident that cities, regions, and states (or “sub-national actors,” in the parlance of climate policy) will play a crucial role in going beyond current national pledges to make even larger global cuts in greenhouse emissions possible. A new Sub National Climate Fund (SnCF) will take the spotlight on November 14 as part of the World Climate Summit. In the U.S., many states and cities are proceeding full steam ahead with major emission cuts, and many U.S. businesses and universities—especially those with strong international ties—are carrying on with their own efforts to cut carbon emissions.

At this year’s COP, says Basile, “sub-national government actors and NGOs will have more freedom to share their voice in working groups and side events.”

One example is the U.S. People’s Delegation, coordinated by Local Governments for Sustainability and 350.org. Another is We Are Still In, a bottom-up network coordinated by more than a dozen nonprofits and business organizations. Since June, more than 2500 leaders from state and local governments, business, and academia have signed the We Are Still In declaration, which states:

“It is imperative that the world know that in the U.S., the actors that will provide the leadership necessary to meet our Paris commitment are found in city halls, state capitals, colleges and universities, investors and businesses. Together, we will remain actively engaged with the international community as part of the global effort to hold warming to well below 2°C and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy that will benefit our security, prosperity, and health.”

A separate project, America’s Pledge, is being led by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg (a UN special envoy) and California governor Jerry Brown. America’s Pledge will be working with We Are Still In and other parties to compile and tally climate-related actions throughout the U.S. economy. A phase-one report on America’s Pledge will be presented to the UNFCCC by Bloomberg and Brown at an event in Bonn on Saturday, November 11.

Bloomberg released this statement on November 2: “Half the nation’s coal plants have closed over the last six years because cheaper and cleaner alternative energy sources have become available – and that trend has only accelerated since last year’s election. Next week I’ll help lead a delegation of U.S. mayors, governors, and CEOs who will attend the COP in Bonn, and we will deliver a unified message: Americans remain committed to meeting our commitment under the Paris Agreement, no matter what happens in Washington. And through our work with America’s Pledge, which organizes and accelerates non-federal climate action, we can get there.”

The UK Guardian has a helpful Q&A about the Bonn meeting. We'll be back with an update on Tropical Depression 19 in the Central Atlantic by midday Tuesday (see our Monday morning post for more on TD 19).

Figure 2. Climate activists from the group Ende Gelaende walk along the edge of the Hambach open-pit coal mine before descending into it during a protest march on Sunday, November 5, 2017, near Manheim, Germany. The Rhineland coalfields feed coal to nearby power stations and are a major source of CO2 emissions. Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images.