20 October 2014: The Legal Affairs Programme of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat has published a document, titled ‘Questions and answers on some legal and institutional aspects of the 2015 agreement.’ The document was prepared for the sixth part of the second session of negotiations under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) taking place in Bonn, Germany, from 20-25 October 2014. The UNFCCC Secretariat has prepared the questions and answers at the request of the ADP Co-Chairs.

The questions and answers address legal and institutional issues that Parties will need to consider in the event that the 2015 agreement is to be adopted as a protocol under UNFCCC Article 17 (protocols).

The document addresses governance arrangements, institutional arrangements, final clauses and transitional arrangements.

It lists possible legal options for governance arrangements for the 2015 agreement, based on examples from other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), such as: a Conference of the Parties serving as a meeting of the Parties to a Protocol; a Conference of the Parties and a Meeting of the Parties; and one governing body for both the parent Convention and its protocols that provides a single forum for decision making by the respective Parties to the Convention and to its protocols, where only Parties to a specific protocol take decisions related to that protocol.

The document then addresses legal options that would facilitate the use, by the 2015 agreement, of existing and future institutional arrangements established under the Convention. It mentions the following options: expressly embedding a particular institutional arrangement in the 2015 agreement, for example, institutional arrangements permanent in nature; a general anchoring of institutional arrangements under the Convention in the 2015 agreement that would allow the governing body of the agreement to make a decision in the future on the use of particular institutions, which may be suitable for non-permanent institutional arrangements; and a combination of the two.

Under the standard final clauses found in multilateral treaties, the document focuses on the entry into force and amendment procedures.

Under transitional arrangements, the document addresses issues that would need to be considered in relation to the work to be undertaken after the adoption of the agreement in 2015, given that it should come into effect and be implemented from 2020, and through which bodies this work will need to be carried out. [Publication: Questions and Answers on Some Legal and Institutional Aspects of the 2015 Agreement]