UN Climate Change COP21 Side Event: Monday 7th December 2015

 

When: Monday 7 December, 15:00 – 16:30 hrs

Where: COP21/CMP11, Parc des Expositions, Le Bourget conference site, side event room - OR 03

This event will share a variety of recent research concerning:

• Supporting the adaptation practices and traditional knowledge (TK) of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and the importance of biocultural heritage.
•  The protection of knowledge holders and the sharing of TK in adaptation initiatives.
•  The role of community protocols as a tool to reach the most vulnerable communities through participation and biodiversity legislation.
•  The quantity and quality of adaptation finance reaching those most in need.

Who: Dr. Hannah Reid, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Ms. Krystyna Swiderska, (IIED), Mr. Alejandro Argumedo (ANDES), Peru & Dr. Yiching Song (Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Science)

Dr. Cath Traynor (Natural Justice) & Mr. Reino Le Fleur (Griqua representative)

Ms. Roberta Ramos, Grupo de Trabalho Amazonico (GTA), & Munduruku representative

Dr. Carlos Potiatra Castro, University of Brasilia

Mr. Delfin Ganapin, UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme

You are invited to find out more at this side event. Light snacks will be served at 14.45 hrs.

Lima Call for Climate Action

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.

UN Climate Summit: A New Approach for Agriculture and Forests? New BENELEX Blog

As global carbon dioxide emissions reportedly reached new highs, representatives from hundreds of national and subnational governments, companies, and civil society organizations gathered in New York for the Climate Summit convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 September 2014. The summit was intended to raise political momentum towards the adoption of a new climate agreement in 2015 and seemingly managed to infuse climate diplomacy with fresh energy.

Several States announced national actions to address climate change, as well as increased contributions to climate finance, most notably China and the European Union. The summit furthermore saw a host of multilateral and multi-stakeholder announcements on actions to address climate change clustered around eight themes: agriculture; cities; energy; financing; forests; industry; resilience; and transportation. For the purposes of BENELEX, the most interesting developments were the adoption of the New York Declaration on Forests and the launch of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. Read complete blog post by Annalisa Savaresi from the BENELEX Project of the University of Edinburgh here.