Negotiators entered last week’s Bonn session with a lengthy to-do list. Whilst they struggled to get through it all, they did begin getting their teeth into some tricky issues. Parties begun sketching out the shape of the agreement, working together to address pre-2020 ambition and bringing clarity to an outcome for adaptation and loss & damage. The to-do list hasn’t gone away, there is still a lot to play for but never fear with the next Bonn session scheduled for the 19th of October we’ll be back before you know it.
Teamwork
The co-chairs made it clear from the get-go that only elements supported by multiple parties or blocks could go the distance to Paris. Progress wasn’t uniform and some elements were addressed better than others but there were a few glimmers of teamwork worth noting. The G77 presented a united front on the inclusion of loss & damage in the agreement. The EU began making up for its previous lacking attempts to work with allies in AILAC and vulnerable country groupings through a renewed and proactive focus on pre-2020 ambition and adaptation.
For the complete article, please see E3G.
As part of this year’s online World Water Week at Home, adelphi and IHE Delft convened the workshop "Water diplomacy: a tool for climate action?". The workshop reflected on the role that foreign policy can play in mitigating, solving and potentially preventing conflicts over the management of transboundary water resources, especially in a changing climate.
The Cerrado, a tropical savannah region located in Central Brazil, is nearly half as large as the Amazon and a deforestation hotspot. Yet little attention is paid to this important biome. That has to change.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects may exacerbate the risk of climate-related instability across the Middle East in the long term.
With the European Green Deal, the European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen has committed to accelerating decarbonisation in Europe as a major priority. The report "The Geopolitics of Decarbonization: Reshaping European Foreign Relations" shows how the EU’s external relations need to evolve to adequately reflect the political, economic and social outcomes of this process.