Before 2020

Before 2020

Friction over finances forced the Bonn conference to stretch more than half-a-day beyond its scheduled closing date. The CoP 23 declaration did finally mention financial and technology transfers. But that is, at best, a procedural victory for the developing countries.

Context:

• The 23rd Conference of Parties (CoP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was expected to be an easy and fast affair.
• But friction over finances forced the Bonn conference to stretch more than half-a-day beyond its scheduled closing date.

About Conference of the Parties (COP23):

• The 2017 UN Climate Conference took place in Bonn, Germany, from 6-18 November.
• Leaders of national governments, cities, states, business, investors, NGOs and civil society gathered to speed up climate action to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The COP is organized by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

What has been discussed?

Evaluation of actions by the signatories:

• The meeting assess whether the actions promised by the signatories to the Paris Agreement are adequate to meet the pact’s objectives.

Responsibility on emerging economies:

• It has been discussed that the pre-2020 commitments are significant for emerging economies like India, China and Brazil.
• Unlike the Paris pact, the responsibility of fulfilling the pre-2020 obligations i.e. reducing emission and providing finance and technology to the developing countries lies on the developed countries.
• If these countries do not fulfil their obligations in the next three years, the emerging economies will have to take a greater share of the climate change mitigation burden after the Paris pact comes into force.

Developed countries have always been slow:

• The developed countries have always been slow about their pre-2020 commitments.
• Reports say that OECD countries have used creative accounting methods to exaggerate their annual climate mitigation aid to developing countries by more than 50 billion dollars