Back to the Start? A brief analysis of the Bonn Climate Change Conference (ADP 2-11)

“Nobody said it was easy / It’s such a shame for us to part / Nobody said it was easy / No one ever said it would be this hard / Oh, take me back to the start” – The Scientist, Coldplay

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Bonn Climate Change Conference took place in Bonn, Germany, from 19-23 October 2015. This was the last in a series of meetings under the UNFCCC in preparation for the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21), scheduled to take place in December 2015, in Paris, France, aimed to advance negotiations to meet the mandate to adopt “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all parties,” which is to come into force in 2020.

When delegates departed from the previous session of the ADP in August 2015, they were buoyed by the prospect of a Co-Chairs’ negotiating text that could serve as the basis for work on the Paris package. In fact, the ADP Co-Chairs, Ahmed Djoghlaf (Algeria) and Daniel Reifsnyder (US), were expected to relieve parties of the painful prospect of crafting an agreement from the sizeable text remaining on the table. However, when parties returned to Bonn six weeks later for ADP 2-11, they were in a considerably less hopeful frame of mind, following the release of a Co-Chairs’ text that many found unbalanced and unacceptable as a basis for further negotiations.

This session was supposed to intensify the pace of text-based negotiations so that the agreement will be ready for the Paris Climate Change Conference. By the end of the week, however, it was clear that parties had not managed to intensify the pace. If anything, they had slowed it down.

Dissatisfied with the ADP Co-Chairs’ text, parties engaged in a text re-compilation exercise, followed by a painstaking process of streamlining and clustering. Many of the compromises reached at the June and August-September sessions of the ADP disappeared, as parties returned to positions expressed in Geneva in February 2015.

Nobody Said It Was Easy

Before delegates arrived in Bonn, the Co-Chairs, as expressed in their scenario note, had hoped to conduct a first reading of the negotiating text in open-ended drafting committees. The bulk of the negotiating work was to be assigned to spin-off groups chaired by the facilitators designated at ADP 2-9 in June. However, dissatisfaction with the negotiating text disrupted the plan.

The ADP Co-Chairs’ “non-paper” prepared ahead of ADP 2-11 contained a draft text for the Paris agreement and draft decisions on the agreement and on pre-2020 ambition. The non-paper was based on the 90-page Geneva negotiating text adopted at ADP 2-8 in February 2015, taking into account the views and positions expressed by parties over the past eight months. The Co-Chairs’ non-paper effectively reduced the Geneva negotiating text to 20 pages: nine pages on a draft agreement text, structured in 26 articles; and 11 pages on a draft decision comprising both workstreams 1 and 2. However, some parties felt that rather than focusing on earlier found convergences and bridging proposals emerging from ADP 2-10, the draft agreement in the non-paper left a large number of crucial substantive decisions to be made after Paris, or simply “forgotten.”

As a result, ADP 2-11 began in an atmosphere of trepidation. Many were anxious to see how the ADP Co-Chairs’ non-paper would be received, given that some parties had already characterized it as a “non-starter.” In spite of its brevity, some had hoped that this text would provide a framework for focused negotiations. Instead, as one observer noted, the Co-Chairs’ text caused parties to lose faith that their issues would even be considered. Several parties suggested the text was a trade-off, achieving both clarity and conciseness at the expense of comprehensiveness, the “hallmark of party ownership.”

But not all parties were willing to work on the basis of the Co-Chairs’ text. To restore party ownership of what many considered an “unbalanced” text, delegates engaged in a complex re-compilation operation.

Going Back To The Start?

Even though parties agreed to make only essential “surgical insertions” into the Co-Chairs’ text, many used the compilation process as a means to re-introduce their long-held positions into the text. Several observers noted that the compiled text reversed compromises achieved at ADP 2-9 and 10, reverting to the positions enshrined in the Geneva negotiating text, saying “it is as if ADP 2-9 and 10 never happened.”

The outcome of this process was a significantly swelled negotiating text, comprising a 31-page draft agreement and 20-page draft decision text on work-stream 1, both with multiple options and a wide range of contrasting ideas. The text on work-stream 2 was included in a separate eight-page document.

At ADP 2-11 parties did not make the shift from compilation, streamlining and consolidation, to actual text negotiations. So while many welcomed the restoration of parties’ ownership of the text, even more worried that delegates in Paris had been saddled with an impossible task.

Others emphasized, as a tangible outcome from ADP 2-11, that the structure of the agreement remained largely unchanged from the Co-Chairs’ non-paper. “It may seem like a small detail,” said one observer, “but the bones of the agreement are in place regardless of how much flesh was added.” Even though the text leaving ADP 2-11 is much shorter and better organized than the Geneva negotiating text, all agreed that it was far from a good basis for negotiations in Paris.

The troubles of ADP 2-11, however, were not limited to the swelling of the negotiating text and to the loss of consensus capital. The meeting was also characterized by a high degree of procedural wrangling. Parties struggled to agree on a mode of work that would rebuild trust in the Co-Chairs, the process and the text, and sufficiently increase the pace. But with as many as nine spin-off groups considering different elements of the text, several lamented that the fragmentation of the negotiating process had made it increasingly hard to see the big picture. Even at ADP 2-10, some parties had raised concern that the fragmented mode of work in spin-off groups needed to be adjusted so to provide “more centralized” negotiating space. Throughout ADP 2-11, views differed on whether, at this stage of the negotiations, spin-off groups are an effective means to work towards the Paris agreement.

Transparency was another area of contention. In spite of some parties’ pleas, the spin-off groups were closed to observers. This left many disgruntled civil society representatives at the conference site venting their frustration through social media. Some suggested the “secretive approach” could not be justified, recalling that the Kyoto Protocol had largely been negotiated in a plenary setting and that civil society plays an important role in assessing progress, holding parties accountable and in assisting parties in the negotiation process. It was finally agreed that this would be rectified at the ADP session in Paris, with observers allowed into spin-off groups unless a party objects.

No One Ever Said It Would Be This Hard

Leaving ADP 2-11, many delegates concurred with Laurence Tubiana, the French ambassador for international climate change negotiations, who spoke for the incoming COP 21 Presidency, that the text produced at this session was far from what parties had hoped to have in their hands ahead of negotiations in Paris. Some feared that, having failed to capitalize on the momentum of earlier sessions, focus would now shift to less transparent political, rather than text-based, negotiations.

It is increasingly important for the political level to provide guidance to the technical negotiations, by identifying political trade-offs and crafting compromises, as technical negotiations have clearly struggled to pave the way forward. Yet many in the text-based negotiations worry that the political level has less experience with the technical intricacies of the process and may trade off hard won compromises if they end up having the craft the final agreement themselves. Fearing turbulence ahead, in the closing hours in Bonn delegates explored possible pathways to Paris. Most parties did not support mandating the ADP Co-Chairs to engage in another revision of the text, preferring to retain their regained ownership. Parties decided instead to request the Secretariat to prepare a technical paper that would identify duplications and streamlining opportunities, “without changing the content of the text.”

How parties will work on this text in Paris, amidst Heads of State and ministerial engagement, remains to be seen. While Heads of State have only been invited to a brief session in advance of COP 21, some wondered whether as “ministers come in, negotiators will have to go out.” Sentiments at ADP 2-11, however, was that political will still exists to reach a deal in Paris, but how ambitious the deal will be, and whether it will be ready for implementation remains in question.

Almost no time at ADP 2-11 was spent addressing the decision text necessary to flesh out the hoped-for concise agreement. The Paris package is meant to constitute of both agreement and decision text. Some had hoped for a virtuous cycle in which the details on the “how” would be captured in decision text, thus allowing the agreement only to focus on the “what,” with parties able to make compromises within the agreement text, once assurances on how issues were being dealt with in the decision text were elaborated. Instead, at ADP 2-11 a vicious cycle continued to inhibit progress, as parties were loath to remove anything from the agreement without knowing what would be in the decision text, but also found it difficult to work on decisions without knowing what would be in the agreement.

Delegates were painfully reminded of the urgency for an ambitious agreement in the closing moments of ADP 2-11. Reporting that Hurricane Patricia was about to hit its coastline with unprecedented strength, Mexico, described the government’s desperate work to move coastal populations out of harm and made an emotional appeal for all parties to set aside their differences and focus on the work ahead. While delegates expressed solidarity with the affected populations, many in the room reflected on the increasing chasm between the international climate policy-making process and the mounting real-world impacts of a changing climate.

Leaving Bonn 20 years after the adoption of the Berlin Mandate for the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol, and ten years since its entry into force, parties to the climate regime are still struggling to find a clear path to address the greatest challenge to ever face humankind. The Paris Climate Change Conference is supposed to light the way for governments to finally deliver an effective global response to this epochal challenge. ADP 2-11, however, demonstrated that parties remain far from reaching any agreement.

During the closing plenary, the French presidency urged parties to prepare for Paris “using all possible consultations that they can create among themselves.” As one seasoned observer noted “turbulence is more of a problem when you are coming in for a landing.” One can hope that, despite a bumpy ride, the process will find a safe landing on a Paris agreement.

This analysis appears in Vol. 12, No. 651 of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin © enb@iisd.org (www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb12651e.pdf). It is written by Beate Antonich, Gillian Nelson, Ph.D., Annalisa Savaresi, Ph.D., Anna Schulz and Virginia Wiseman. The Editor is Pamela Chasek, Ph.D. <pam@iisd.org>. The Director of IISD Reporting Services is Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI <kimo@iisd.org>. The Sustaining Donors of the Bulletin are the European Union, the Government of Switzerland (the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC)), and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. General Support for the Bulletin during 2015 is provided by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, SWAN International, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Japanese Ministry of Environment (through the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies - IGES), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The opinions expressed in the Bulletin are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IISD or other donors.

Excerpts from this analysis may be used in non-commercial publications with the following citation:  Schulz, Anna, Antonich, Beate, Nelson, Gillian, Savaresi, Annalisa and Wiseman, Virginia. 2015. Summary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference: 19-23 October 2015. Earth Negotiations Bulletin 12, 651.