The Co-Chairs of an informal international climate dialogue convened by the US Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) have launched a report outlining emerging elements of a 2015 climate agreement.
Based on the year-long 'Toward 2015' dialogue, which brought together senior climate negotiators from over 20 countries, the Co-Chairs' report foresees a durable legal agreement with binding commitments for all parties, including in relation to inscribing, maintaining and reporting on their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
15 July 2015: The Co-Chairs of an informal international climate dialogue convened by the US Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) have launched a report outlining emerging elements of a 2015 climate agreement. Based on the year-long ‘Toward 2015′ dialogue, which brought together senior climate negotiators from over 20 countries, the Co-Chairs’ report foresees a durable legal agreement with binding commitments for all parties, including in relation to inscribing, maintaining and reporting on their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
The report, titled ‘Vision for Paris: Building and Effective Climate Agreement,’ was launched on 15 July 2015. It presents the views of the Toward 2015 dialogue Co-Chairs Valli Moosa, former Minister for Environment of South Africa, and Harald Dovland, former Head of the Norwegian delegation to the UNFCCC and former Co-Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP).
The report draws from close to 100 hours of discussions, held over eight meetings that took place from March 2014 to May 2015, among senior negotiators from 21 countries, the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) and the European Commission, who participated in their personal capacities.
The Co-Chairs’ report states that the UN Paris Climate Change Conference “presents a critical opportunity to strengthen the multilateral response to the profound challenge of global climate change.” It notes that parties to the UNFCCC “have begun to construct a hybrid agreement combining top-down and bottom-up elements with the aim of both broad participation and strong ambition.”
It calls for an agreement in Paris that: establishes a “legal, rules-based framework” that maximizes ambition and delivery, is dynamic and durable, and supports a strengthening global effort; and gives due weight to all elements, namely mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, capacity building, and transparency of action and support.
The report also outlines views relating to: long-term direction toward a low-carbon, climate-resilient global economy; equity and differentiation, including addressing differentiation within the context of each element; structure and legal form, including a core agreement, related Conference of the Parties (COP) decisions, and one or more political declarations; mitigation, including binding commitments by all parties in the core agreement to inscribe, maintain and report on progress in implementing their NDCs; transparency and accountability; taking stock and updating NDCs; adaptation; finance, including greater clarity and confidence relating to pre-2020 flows; and non-state actors.
An interim report of the Toward 2015 dialogue was released by the Co-Chairs in October 2014.
C2ES, established in 2011 as the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, is an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit organization based in Arlington, Virginia, US. It works to advance strong policy and action to address the challenges of energy and climate change. [C2ES Publication Webpage] [Publication: Vision for Paris: Building an Effective Climate Agreement] [C2ES Toward 2015 Dialogue Webpage] [C2ES Toward 2015 Dialogue Interim Report]