The body ultimately responsible for the process of managing international climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has agreed to move preparatory climate negotiations online. Senior Research Fellow Richard Klein, who leads the SEI project “Online Climate Negotiations: Making a Virtue of Necessity?”, says the decision was inevitable in light of the urgency of international climate action.
On 15 April, the 11-member Bureau of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) agreed to hold a three-week virtual meeting starting on 31 May. The meeting allows countries to advance the extensive work that needs to be done in preparation for COP26, which is scheduled to be held in Glasgow, in November this year. The virtual meeting will be held instead of the typical fortnight of in-person climate negotiations, which are convened annually by the two permanent subsidiary bodies under the UNFCCC.
The Bureau had not been able to reach an agreement to move the talks online at its previous meeting in late February, chiefly because of concerns over access. In-person climate negotiations scheduled for June 2020 had already been postponed and then cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and COP26, originally scheduled for November 2020, had to be postponed until 2021.
“The Bureau decision was inevitable given the urgency with which the negotiations need to move forward,” said Richard Klein, a senior research fellow at SEI and lead of the Online Climate Negotiations project. “Further delay in climate negotiations risks further delay in climate action.
“But there are good reasons beyond the Covid-19 pandemic for exploring opportunities to move towards fully or largely online meetings under the UNFCCC. We need to reduce the environmental footprint of the negotiations, and seize opportunities to strengthen the climate talks,” Klein added.
The Online Climate Negotiations project, funded by Sweden’s Ministry of the Environment, investigates what it takes to move the climate change negotiations online in a way that makes the talks more inclusive, transparent and effective. The project team is currently engaging a wide spectrum of stakeholders in order to inventory requirements and expectations with regard to different dimensions of the climate negotiations process.
“Initial findings from the survey and interviews we have been conducting indicate an openness to moving at least parts of the UN climate process online. Respondents, most of whom have been involved in the process for many years, noted that online formats could even be beneficial for some parts of the process,” said Frida Lager, a research associate at SEI, who is involved in the project.
“Moving these June negotiations online will be an important learning experience as the format of COP26 remains unclear,” Klein added. “Our project will use the findings of the survey and the interviews to develop alternative scenarios that will be tested with stakeholders.”
Team Leader: International Climate Risk and Adaptation; Senior Research Fellow
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Feature / This survey asked what the obstacles are to moving climate negotiations under the UNFCCC online — and what would it take to make the process more inclusive?
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