The UNFCCC Secretariat has announced that the negotiating text for the anticipated 2015 climate change agreement has been translated into the six official UN languages and formally communicated to governments. The text was agreed as the basis for negotiations by the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) at the eighth part of its second session in February 2015.
The global climate change agreement is expected to be adopted at the Paris Climate Change Conference in December 2015. According to the Secretariat, all the legal procedures required for countries to adopt a legal instrument under the UNFCCC have now been completed.
Communicating the text well in advance of the May 2015 deadline will allow early consideration of areas of emerging consensus and the range of options available to governments, according to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. The text contains various country proposals on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building, and transparency of action and support.
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Colombia’s long-standing internal conflict and the country’s contribution to climate change share one common root cause: land concentration. Policies to strengthen access to land and to ensure sustainable land use might therefore hold the key to promoting peacebuilding in Colombia, while simultaneously reducing emissions.
As disasters wreak havoc all over South Asia, health impacts have increasingly emerged as a major concern for communities and governments in the region. It underscores the need for concerted efforts towards building synergies between the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, particularly now, in the post-disaster reconstruction phase, to ensure “building back better” and future disaster prevention.
In the Inner Mongolian county of Horinger, Northwestern China, afforestation efforts have transformed a barren, dusty landscape into a pine forest. Planting trees has diminished the sandstorms, boosted biodiversity and improved the environment generally. As the climate emergency worsens, the potential for planted trees to draw carbon out of the atmosphere is being re-examined. What can the world learn from the Chinese experience with afforestation?
Two events in August 2019 underlined the complexity of paving the way to a climate-neutral world: the publishing of the new IPCC report and the Amazon fires. Both events demand that climate diplomats move beyond a narrowed focus on energy in decarbonisation debates.