UNFCCC Blog Post #6

Now that the meetings are finally over and an agreement has been released, I took the time to review the English version to see if I could make sense of all the information packed in there. The entire beginning of this agreement released by the Cop president uses words in italics like: acknowledging, emphasizing, agreeing, recognizing, etc. What surprised me a lot about the beginning was how they mentioned, “Agreeing to uphold and promote regional and international cooperation in order to mobilize stronger and more ambitious climate action by all Parties and non-Party stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector, financial institutions, cities and other subnational authorities, local communities and indigenous peoples” (2). A lot of this sort of mentioning of indigenous people makes it sounds like they will be considered when industrialized countries start making decisions and real action on climate change, but in my last post I talked about how people were upset that indigenous and underdeveloped countries felt upset that the agreements failed to prioritize them. In a lot of the interviews I watched they almost all mentioned how this could end up being and industrial country take over and how the agreement is only word, not action. This is a good point, we only really know that countries agreed to goals like keeping the temp below 2 degrees Celsius if not 1.5, but just like I mentioned in the previous post…they are only words. Time will tell whether or not we see progress.

Another interesting note was at the very end in article 28. It reads that, “At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary” (32). So from what I understand, countries can back out of this, but only after three years and another year after receiving a receipt from the Depository of the notification of withdrawal. This is good to know except I’m still skeptical as to what this will do to prevent countries from getting lazy. We’ve seen so much talk, but where’s the walk. Sure I suppose this encourages countries to stay in the game and at least try to collectively do things for at least half a decade or so. That means everyone stays in the agreement going through next years in Morocco as well as the following years wherever delegations will be held. Again, I want to stress the importance of holding people accountable for their word. I think it is up to the public to really do so and put pressure on our leaders (especially in the U.S.) to hold their word.

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