Uganda’s take home from UN climate conference in Madrid

Last year’s annual UN climate conference, Conference of Parties 25 in Madrid, became the longest on record after it concluded more than two weeks of fraught negotiations.

Nearly 27,000 delegates arrived in the Spanish capital in early December aiming to finalise the “rulebook” of the Paris Agreement, the operating manual needed when it takes effect this year by settling on rules for carbon markets and other forms of international cooperation under “Article 6” of the deal.

The delegates also hoped to send a message of intent, signalling to the wider world that the UN climate process remains relevant and that it recognises the yawning gap between current progress and global goals to limit warming.

Ultimately, however, the talks were unable to reach consensus in many areas, pushing decisions into 2020 under “Rule 16” of the UN climate process.

Matters including Article 6 and “common time frames” for climate pledges were all punted into 2020, when countries are also due to raise the ambition of their efforts.

Uganda is a signatory to the United Nations Framework on climate change (UNFCC) and all the outcomes of COP 25 need to be cascaded home. Some of the outcomes which we need to give priority as a nation include;

Need for ‘ambition’. Under the Paris Agreement, all parties committed to not only submitting nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for cutting emissions, but also to “recommunicate” or “update” their pledges by the end of 2020. UNFCCC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa reminded delegates that “ambition” was not officially on the agenda for COP25, but that many saw it as essential to send a clear message to the world.

Share of proceeds’ to fund adaptation. One of the more politically fraught issues was around what “share of proceeds” from selling carbon offsets should be set aside to fund adaptation efforts in the most vulnerable countries. A further question was whether to set aside a share of proceeds under Article 6.2, as well as under 6.4, despite the Paris Agreement only explicitly mentioning the idea in the latter context. Securing support for adaptation via all Article 6 trading was marked down as a key priority by negotiating blocs including the African Group, as well as the “G77 + China”.

Loss and damage. The question of how to support countries affected by the irreversible and non-adaptable impacts of climate change has been a long-running debate at COPs over recent years. Climate finance is in itself a contentious topic, with richer countries often falling short of the figures developing countries say they need.
When finance is discussed, the conversation tends to focus on support for adaptation and cutting emissions.

At COP25, negotiators were charged with reviewing the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), which was established in 2013 to deal with this kind of “loss and damage”.

Crucially, they want to secure “new and additional” money – as well as technology and capacity-building – to help deal with the irreversible damage caused by climate-induced disasters.

Another issue which was considered was long-term climate finance (LTF), a work stream that examines progress and scaling up of climate finance, but which is due to end in 2020. There is a debate about whether to continue it at all, or whether to bring it under the CMA (i.e. the Paris Agreement).

Also discussed in Madrid was the second “periodic review” of the long-term goal of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the overarching legal framework for international action to tackle warming that was first agreed in 1992. Article 2 of the Convention sets the framing for the long-term goal.

Gender action plan. A rare success story at this year’s COP was a decision on a new five-year gender action plan (GAP), intended to “support the implementation of gender-related decisions and mandates in the UNFCCC process”.

The original plan, agreed at COP20 in Lima, “seeks to advance women’s full, equal and meaningful participation and promote gender-responsive climate policy and the mainstreaming of a gender perspective” Uganda doesn’t have a gender climate action plan and this will be one of the area Uganda will undertake.

Mr Kasumba is a management specialist at CliMate ECOs Uganda.
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