NEW DELHI, April 6: Brazil’s idea to create a new multilateral body under the UN climate regime to fast-track implementation of COP decisions has triggered cautious responses from key developed countries, with Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden backing reform discussions but warning against weakening the core UNFCCC process.
Brazil, which will host this year’s UN climate conference or COP30 in Belem, has informally proposed setting up a “Climate Change Council” under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to improve how the world responds to climate change.
The idea is to speed up decision-making, coordinate efforts and improve implementation as many feel the current UN climate process is too slow and complicated.
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While the Paris Agreement has helped lower projected warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 2.1-2.8 degrees Celsius, the world is still off track for its 1.5 degrees Celsius goal. In fact, 2024 was the first year with global temperatures above 1.5 degrees Celsius for a full calendar year.
With climate impacts worsening and global action not keeping up, experts say real progress may now require a complete rethink of the Paris Agreement and how climate diplomacy works.
Part of a five-member delegation from EU countries that visited India last week, Germany’s Deputy Special Envoy for International Climate Action Gerhard Schlaudraff told journalists that the idea was discussed at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin in March.
He welcomed Brazil’s move to start the conversation but warned against undermining the UNFCCC or the Paris Agreement.
“There is a general idea that the Brazilians put forward… but there’s also the idea for everybody who was in the room that the UNFCCC is right now the best thing we have and we should not throw it away,”Schlaudraff said.
He said the UN climate process is an “expression of working multilateralism, where everybody has the same say at the table (and) every voice can be heard”.
Schlaudraff also said that one should not expect from COPs or the UNFCCC process what it cannot deliver.
“Every year, the expectation is that the COPs will solve the climate crisis and that’s not realistic,” he said.
The German envoy said it’s important to look at what works and what does not work.
As the world moves towards implementation of commitments, it’s very clear that what is inside the UNFCCC and what is outside need to be brought together. How exactly to do this is not easy, he admitted.
Schlaudraff added that instead of saying the current system is not working, “we should use it to build on what we have”.
European Union Special Envoy for Climate and Environment Anthony Agotha agreed that while UN climate talks can be slow, they remain irreplaceable.
“These are UN processes with consensus and they can be painfully, painfully slow,” he said. “We don’t have a world government. But interestingly enough, we all come together at these COPs… and we come out with something.”
Agotha said the outcome at the UN climate conference in Baku last year (COP29) “could have been worse” and that the talks nearly fell apart.
Such a thing, especially at a time when the US was pulling out of the Paris Agreement, would have been disastrous for the process, he said.
“I like to think that we all have a part in keeping it alive, so I take that as a win,” he said, while acknowledging that the result “wasn’t great”.
Agotha highlighted the progress made since the 2015 Paris Agreement, saying the projected global temperature rise has come down from nearly 5 degrees Celsius to about 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
“That’s not good enough. That’s still too hot,” he added.
Sweden’s Climate Ambassador Mattias Frumerie also supported improving implementation within the existing system. “I think all of us see that the UNFCCC process as a whole would need to be more efficient, especially when it comes to implementation.”
He said, “We have set our global targets, we have the Paris Agreement, we have our Paris rulebook in place… now we need to make sure that we deliver what we have committed to.”
Frumerie said the EU would work with the Brazilian COP presidency to “explore what more we can do” within the process when talking about moving from negotiations to implementation.
Other members of the delegation warned that setting up the council might actually make global climate action more divided instead of more united. (PTI)
