The latest round of UN climate change negotiations have begun at the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
The UN climate change negotiations come ahead of the COP24 event, to be held in Katowice, Poland, in December of this year, and began on Monday. The conference runs until next Thursday, and efforts will include development of the ‘operating manual’ that countries have already negotiated for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, explained that while the Paris Climate Agreement will have a significant impact on efforts to combat global warming, greater ambition is drastically needed to urgently meet targets.
She said: “We are witnessing the severe impacts of climate change throughout the world. Every credible scientific source is telling us that these impacts will only get worse if we do not address climate change and it also tells us that our window of time for addressing it is closing very soon. We need to dramatically increase our ambitions.”
What are the priorities for the conference?
According to Espinosa, there are three major priorities to be addressed at the conference ahead of COP24. These areas include:
- The need for stakeholders, including governments, NGOs, businesses and citizens, to accelerate climate action by 2020;
- The completion of the operating manual for the implementation of Paris Climate Agreement guidelines; and
- The improvement of conditions to enable countries to demonstrate greater ambition in national policies.
The Bonn Climate Change Conference will mark the continuation of UN climate change negotiations and the development of the operational manual and guidelines – officially dubbed the Paris Agreement Work Programme.
Work on the guidelines began at COP23, held in Fiji in November of last year. The full text of the Paris Agreement Work Programme guidelines will be officially concluded at COP24, in order to fully accelerate efforts to combat climate change and limit global warming.
