About COP23


This year, the University of Maine is sending its inaugural delegation to a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP).

The UNFCCC was established in 1992 under the Rio Convention, and since that time it has served as the major framework under which the world has negotiated towards a plan for climate change action at the international level.

This year is the 23rd meeting of the international community under this convention making it COP23. Each year, the COPs rotate to a different region of the world, and this year is the Asia/Pacific's turn to host the international climate change negotiations, so the presidency of the COP is Fiji. However, Fiji decided that it would prefer to host its COP at the Secretariat, or the "home base" of the UNFCCC, instead of in Fiji because of the number of delegates who attend the conference and the resources needed to run the conference. So, we will be attending the Fiji COP in Bonn, Germany from November 6-November 17, 2017.

The COPs have multiple different flows of activities taking place over the two week meeting including:

  • Official negotiations- Meetings held between country delegates to negotiate plans or actions on a particular topics. Topics include mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, and science & technology.
  • Side events- These are programs organized by countries, NGOs, and/or the UNFCCC secretariat for the purposes of sharing knowledge on climate change related topics. There are hundreds of side events over the two week conference, and they provide opportunities for sharing of information and networking across organizations. 
  • Press conferences- Any entity at the COP can hold a press conference which is set up to be broadcasted outside of the UNFCCC walls. It is an opportunity for the press and other observers to ask questions of country delegations and other major players in the negotiations.
  • Exhibit hall- This is a space where delegations display information about their group or country. It presents an opportunity to seek out interactions with particular organizations. 
  • Other events- Many organizations take the COP as an opportunity to host events outside of the COP venue which supplement the above activities. These include Climate and Development Days, the Sustainable Innovation Forum, and this year it it include the US Climate Action Pavilion. 
To follow this and more, keep updated with our blog and check out the Learn More page.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Are Still In (Update on US at COP23)

Image
Posted by Anna McGinn and Will Kochtitzky Opening panel discussion at US Climate Action Pavilion The United States Climate Action Pavilion (also know as the We Are Still In pavilion) opened yesterday with a well attended panel discussion between US leaders representing the state level, universities, faith organizations, corporations, and cities. As described in a previous post about the US at COP23 , this pavilion is not run by the federal government- as all other country pavilions are- but it is run by sub-national actors and is situated right outside the official negotiating venue. Over the next week, they are hosting events ranging from "city actions to decarbonize buildings" to "the economic case for US climate action: views from congress and the private sector." We learned this morning that at least five US senators will be traveling to Bonn to speak in the US Climate Action Pavilion. Wednesday is colleges and universities day at the pavilion, and UMa...
Read more

Earth Science Feeding the COP

Image
Posted by: Will Kochtitzky How do we monitor changes to earth? How do we measure the essential climate variables (ECV) to inform decision making? How do we quantify climate change? At the COP, all these questions and more are asked within in the realm of “Research and Systematic Observation”. Because systematic observations play a key role in the UNFCCC processes there are defined mechanisms for parties (countries) to receive information from organizations working to make earth observations, such as the European Space Agency, World Meteorological Organization, among others. These groups are vital in assessing the state of the planet and relaying scientific information to the parties. In these negotiations, the parties also request information from scientific bodies. Many people may not consider these conversations important, as they are not dealing with climate policy and are not impacting global carbon emissions. In fact, these negotiations are the ground work ...
Read more

"We are all in the same canoe"

Image
Posted by: Anna McGinn Presentation at the evening welcome reception by  (from left to right)  the moderator, Fiji Prime Minister- President of the COP, German  Minister of  Environment,  and head (secretariat) of UNFCCC.   COP23 kicked off this morning in Bonn, Germany with the opening ceremony and plenaries. The ceremony featured an important cast of characters for international climate change negotiation including the last year's COP President from Morocco, this year's COP President from Fiji, the German Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (because they are physically hosting the COP here in Bonn on behalf of Fiji), the Chair of the IPCC, and the head of the UNFCCC. Upon accepting the Presidency of the COP, the Prime Minister of Fiji, Minister Frank Bainimarama asserted that the delegates here, and the countries they represent, "are all in the same canoe," and therefore, we need to work together ov...
Read more