The 20th Session of the Conference of
Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
wrapped up over two weeks of negotiations with the release of the ‘Lima Call for Climate Action’. This decision will be the basis of the global climate
agreement expected in 2015, and its annex contains elements for a draft
negotiating text.
A key component of this agreement are
country climate pledges known as ‘intended nationally determined contributions’
(INDCs), these are a countries contribution towards achieving the Conventions
ultimate objective, which is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a
level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system. Crucially each country is expected to outline their INDCs, and thus the
old firewall of developed and developing countries has been breached, and
developing countries now have commitments. Countries will communicate these
during the early part of 2015 or by the start of October 2015 at the latest,
and the UNFCCC secretariat will produce a synthesis report of their aggregate
effect. It was agreed that these contributions will be an improvement on a
countries existing undertakings, however, missing from the text was the need
for an ex-ante review of these commitments, and no common, comprehensive
reporting methodologies were specified. This means it will be difficult to
assess the potential impact of these commitments over time and also to compare
approaches between countries. It is likely that IDRCs will focus on mitigation,
as countries are not obliged to provide information on their adaptation plans,
although they are free to do so if they wish.
