What you need to know about...COP's past and present

By Laura Watson

UN Secretary General and others celebrating the agreement at COP21 [image by Arnaud Bouissou]

What is a COP?
A Conference of Parties- it is the highest or decision-making authority of the Convention. Since 1995, there have been 25 COPs to discuss the Convention, based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
 
What is the UNFCCC?
The UNFCCC is an international treaty standing for United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change. The treaty has the ultimate objective to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system." It was ratified in 1994 following the Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, with 196 countries signing it, symbolising near universal aknowledgement of climate change being an issue. The Treaty ratified in 1994 does not include measures for enforcement.
 
What happens at a COP?
During these conferences, the implementation of the Convention is reviewed and discussed, along with discussion of any new laws needed to aid further implementation steps.
 
Who is involved?

1. Governments- the ‘Parties’ that have signed the Convention
2. UN bodies, agencies and other international governmental organisations eg the world Bank.
3. Observers – divided into 3 categories: UN specialised Agencies, IGOs (Intergovernmental Organisations) and NGOs (Non-governmental Organisations)

• The NGO’s represent a range of people from business and industry, indigenous communities, trade unions, youth organisations, academic institutions (several members of Oxford University attended the COP at Madrid- see Kate’s post on their reflections here) and more.

 
How are the Parties organised?
Parties are traditionally grouped regionally into the Asian, Eastern European, Latin American and Carribbean, African and Western European States.
However, these regional groupings often don’t represent the significant interests of the Parties involved in the climate negotiations, thus other groupings also carry significance. These groups include:
 

• The G-77 - a group of originally 77 developing countries (now 133 members) founded in 1964 in the context of UNCTAD, to establish common negotiating positions for developing nations
• AGN-The African Group of Negotiators (African Group) established in Berlin at COP1, to represent an African unified voice on climate negotiations, with particular focus on vulnerability, mitigation, and adaptation to climate change.
• The Arab States group has 22 Parties, representing this regions climate stance
• EU- they meet and agree on common negotiating positions prior to a COP, with its President then voicing the united position
• SIDS-The Small Island Developing States is a group of low-lying islands, most of which are in the G-77, important because these low-lying islands are especially vulnerable to sea level rise – thus climate change poses a direct threat to their survival[c8] [LW9] 

 
Key COP outcomes
 
COP 3) 1997-Kyoto Protocol

• 197 countries came together to sign the Kyoto Protocol, first binding agreement to cut emissions, especially aimed at developed countries
• The USA failed to ratify it, undermining the credibility of the Protocol and its power to push developed nations into acknowledging their responsibility to cut emissions.

 
COP 15) 2009-Copenhagen Accord

• The Copenhagen Accord was meant to deliver universal commitment to climate change to replace Kyoto (set to expire in 2012)
• All that emerged was a political agreement that recognised the need to act on climate change and moved the deadline for reviewing existing agreements to 2015

 
COP 16) 2010 Cancun

• Formal commitment by countries to limit warming to 2oC above pre-industrial levels – a significant, but not new idea-it had been proposed 3 decades earlier
• Some party groupings wanted to limit warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial temperatures– this was an idea that would only take hold later, as proposed by scientists in the IPCC 2018 report

 
COP 17) 2011-Durban Alliance

• At this COP, governments recognised the need for a universal agreement to act on climate change beyond 2020
• The language agreed upon here meant that the outcome of 2015 would be a legal instrument, applicable to all Parties of the Convention

 
COP 21) 2015-Paris Agreement

• Signed by all countries and seen as a triumph in the wake of the previous failures of Kyoto and Cancun.
• The Agreement aims to keep global temperature rise to well below 2oC by the end of the century, providing a framework to ensure that this occurs.
• Parties must submit a Nationally Determined Contribution every 5 years as of 2020 along with a report on their emissions and their progress towards a 1.5oC target.
• Implementation is proving to be very difficult, as negotiations on this matter are complex as can be seen with the recent COP.
• Another complication is that Trump has said that the USA are pulling out of the Paris Agreement; they have not officially withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and although they have started the formal negotiations, the process will not be complete until after the next round of presidential elections.

 
Cop 25) 2019- Madrid

• This year’s COP25 in Madrid was meant to take implementation steps before 2020 – but this unfortunately didn’t happen and there was a disconnect between the representatives’ positions and what the protesters outside wanted to see.
• No agreement on Article 6, proposing mechanisms for voluntary contribution and international cooperation. (See Olivia’s post for ‘What You need to know about article 6’)
• There were some positive moves, in that 177 companies pledged to cut emissions

References
https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/supreme-bodies/conference-of-the-parties-cop?page=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0
 
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/11/1052251
 
https://unfccc.int/about-the-un-climate-change-conference-december-2019
 
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/parties-non-party-stakeholders/parties/party-groupings
 
https://www.carbonbrief.org/cop25-key-outcomes-agreed-at-the-un-climate-talks-in-madrid
 
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-convention/what-is-the-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change
 
https://issuu.com/caninternational/docs/1._introduction_to_the_unfccc
 
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_SPM_version_report_LR.pdf