Paris Blues? Causes, Symptoms And Treatment For Success In 2018

30 April 2018

Dear delegates,
ECO is glad to see you back and wanted to share some reflections with you on what needs to be done in 2018. It seemed COP23 left you exhausted, unhappy over things that usually wouldn’t bother you and worried whether you can get it all done. Rest assured, all these feelings are normal during the technical phase of these negotiations. You seem to have the Paris Blues.
Paris Blues? Yes, delivering the Paris Agreement was a huge life changing experience with a lot of attention and support, particularly from your Ministers and even Heads of State. The first year after Paris went by in a hormone rush – the spirit of Paris on steroids. Collectively carried by a feeling of accomplishment and trust, you even managed to overcome the orange fever that threatened the entire Agreement before its first birthday. Now reality kicks in; attention has shifted to other issues and you are the ones that must do the heavy lifting to keep Paris alive by delivering on the implementation guidelines, the ambition mechanism, and other key issues in 2018.
But it can be done! The Paris Blues is a condition that can be treated. Here are some tips for SB48 to get in shape and achieve your 2018 goals:
a. Deliver clear options for negotiation text
With everything that is at stake this year, it is vital that no time is wasted and that we see significant progress on the implementation guidelines at this intersessional. We need progress towards having a full negotiation text before the next session. The preliminary outcomes achieved during this session will set the tone for the year and will be critical for success or failure.
b. Boost your energy: talanoa talanoa
The Talanoa Dialogue is a crucial opportunity to build trust and cooperation. It is also a key opportunity to harvest innovative ideas for enhanced climate ambition. Use the Talanoa Dialogue to show us that you get it: More needs to be done in order to bring the world on a 1.5°C consistent and climate-resilient pathway. A Talanoa Dialogue focused on increasing ambition will make you leave Bonn with the energy needed to overcome the Paris Blues and revise your NDCs by 2020.

c. Tackle difficult issues right away
Besides the Talanoa Dialogue and the adoption of the Implementation Guidelines, there are a number of issues that are also critical and require much attention at SB48.
o Suva Expert Dialogue on Loss and Damage: Use the dialogue as a springboard into a taskforce to undertake all the work that is necessary ahead of the review of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) at COP25 in 2019. This work includes establishing a workable definition for loss and damage (L&D) finance, clarifying the scale of need and sources for L&D finance, amongst others.
o Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA): Agree on “Modalities and Procedures” with the purpose of shaping the KJWA mode of working to be effective, rigorous and relevant.
o Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE): Focus on lessons learned, including needs, gaps and barriers, in relation to the promotion of public awareness, public participation, and access to information in the context of specific areas of climate action: adaptation, loss and damage, mitigation, finance, transparency, technology development and transfer, and capacity-building.
o Pre-2020 action and finance: Developed countries have made commitments that they need to keep, so we can start into a new era of joint climate action based on the trust that promises will be kept. While not all of these questions might be on the official agenda here, it is important that those who have made promises start giving some indications how they will address them: How is the pre-2020 mitigation gap to be addressed? How are we going to get to US$100 billion annual climate finance by 2020? Can we expect an ambitious GCF replenishment?

d. Seek help if and when needed
Nobody expects you to be able to take life changing decisions on your own. If in two weeks time you continue to feel the Paris blues, seek help from your Ministers to weigh in (they will understand if you explain) and can send the right political signals to the Petersberg Dialogue, the Ministerial for Climate Action, and the G7. Also the Chairs are there to help when and where needed.

You can do it!