Against the backdrop of severe and record heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and floods across the world, governments are convening a supplementary meeting in Bangkok, Thailand from Tuesday, September 4 to Sunday, September 9, 2018 to prepare the implementation guidelines of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The guidelines are needed to make the Paris Agreement work fairly and transparently for all.

Following a two-year negotiation process, the implementation guidelines are set to be adopted at the annual climate conference, COP24, to be held in Katowice, Poland in December.

While the talks have made modest progress, the Bangkok meeting is the last opportunity before COP24 to accelerate negotiations.

“Building on progress made, countries now need to take a decisive step forward in preparing the ambitious and balanced outcome that we need in Katowice,” Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, said at a press conference on Monday September 3, 2018.

Reaching success at COP24 will be challenging without the preparation of an official negotiating text on the implementation guidelines.

“It will be critical for negotiators in Bangkok to produce solid text-based output that can function as the basis for the concluding negotiations in Katowice and be turned into the final implementation guidelines of the Paris Agreement at COP24. The texts capturing progress to date are not yet refined enough for this purpose,” Ms. Espinosa said.

“With only six additional days for negotiations in Bangkok, UN Climate Change is carefully coordinating demands to fully support countries in their important task,” she added.

Highly technical in nature, the implementation guidelines are needed to monitor progress on climate action. Such action includes measures to deal with climate impacts such as droughts or floods and urgent support to enable developing countries to contribute to climate action.

They are also essential for determining whether emissions are being reduced at an ambitious rate to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C, and as close to 1.5 °C as possible this century. Importantly, the guidelines are also needed to make the agreement’s institutions fully operational beyond COP24.

“Every year, the impacts of climate change are getting worse. This means that every year, the poorest and most vulnerable, who have contributed almost nothing to the problem, suffer more,” Ms. Espinosa underlined.

“Completing the operational aspects of the Paris Agreement and unlocking practical climate actions by putting in place the implementation guidelines represents a key opportunity for the multilateral process and society at large to address a global problem, while leaving nobody behind,” she stressed.

A host of upcoming events in the period before COP24 are a clear indication that not only many economic actors, but also civil society, cities and regions are looking to accelerate climate action. More and more of these actors are aligning their strategic visions with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Governments clearly lead the climate change process. But they alone can’t rise to the challenge and need the support of all these actors. This is slowly leading to a new, more inclusive multilateralism to deal with climate change, which is increasingly becoming evident,” said Ms. Espinosa.

The 2018 Climate Weeks in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in mid-September and Climate Week in New York towards the end of September, to name a few, are all events that rally both governments and non-Party stakeholders around climate change.

“These events clearly demonstrate global momentum. They show that the world is ready to implement the Paris Agreement in the way world leaders envisaged in Paris in 2015,” Ms. Espinosa stated.

However, non-governmental organisations are less optimistic about the developed countries’ willingness to contribute to the mission, saying that they are “under no illusion” at another press conference in Bangkok that the UN negotiations can bring about such changes.

“The U.S. and other rich countries are constantly attempting to escape full accountability for their huge role on causing and exacerbating climate change,” said Lidy Nacpil, co-ordinator of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

“With the expressed intention by the US to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, we do not want to sink into the abyss alone,” said Mithika Mwenda of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), referring to President Donald Trump’s announcement in 2017.

“Our hope is that like-minded groups will not evolve into a coalition of climate-deniers mobilised by the U.S. to rock the UNFCCC negotiations boat,” Mwenda added.

As the last round of climate change negotiations start in Bangkok, Thailand, observers are calling for significant progress in the development of the rulebook to guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

The additional Bangkok session was reportedly scheduled following slow progress in negotiations in Bonn, Germany earlier in 2018. It is said to represent the last opportunity for countries to come together to develop the rules and processes to operationalise the Paris Agreement before COP24 in Katowice, Poland in December, when these guidelines are due to be finalised.

The rulebook, which elaborates the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, is considered extremely important because it determines how and whether the agreement can be implemented in a manner that is ambitious and equitable or not.

Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, ACT Alliance General Secretary, said: “Major decisions on the implementation of the Paris agreement will be made at COP24 in Poland later this year, and this will depend on how much progress is made in the Bangkok negotiations. We want to see significant steps forward in all the negotiations to enable governments to make the necessary decisions when they meet at COP24.”

Martin Vogel, Chair of the ACT Alliance climate change group, sated: “The goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming by 1.5 degrees, to build global resilience to the impacts of climate change and to provide financial resources to support the efforts of developing countries to respond to climate change can only be achieved if the rulebook reflects the necessary transparency, accountability, and ambition  and deliver climate justice that respects human rights and contributes to sustainable development.”

Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, Gebru Jember Endalew, said: “This additional Bangkok session will be critical to the delivery of a robust, balanced and comprehensive set of implementation guidelines for the Paris Agreement at COP24. Negotiators have one week in Bangkok before Katowice; time to develop these rules is running out and there remains a lot of work to be done. A last-minute rush in Katowice must be avoided so that the voices of poor and vulnerable countries are fully heard.”

In Bangkok, negotiators will be working from recently published “tools”, which present the various options that have been put forward by countries. According to Endalew, negotiators will need to narrow down these options to enable textual negotiations and finalisation of the Paris Agreement guidelines at COP24.

He said: “I hope all Parties to come to Bangkok ready to engage constructively on the tools, and to take part in meaningful discussion. The effectiveness of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of the 1.5°C goal and other global goals depends on the robustness of the guidelines and procedures that are developed to bring the Agreement to life.”

“In negotiating these outcomes, countries must not lose sight of the big picture. The past months have seen changing rainfall patterns in Africa and heatwaves across much of the Northern Hemisphere. Attribution science tells us these are the impacts of climate change and they will only continue to intensify if immediate action is not taken. The Paris Agreement guidelines developed this year must be guidelines that will put us on a pathway to limit warming to 1.5°C, build resilience and protect communities across the world. Recent research confirms that any more warming than this will have catastrophic flow on effects, and this is particularly true for LDCs.”

Of particular importance to the LDC Group is the issue of climate finance, for which little progress was made at the negotiations in Bonn in May 2018.

On climate finance, Endalew said: “Climate finance enables LDCs and other developing countries to avoid repeating a history of high-carbon development pathways, and to protect communities against the dire consequences of a climate crisis they did little to cause. Trillions of dollars need to be delivered to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Deciding rules to ensure predictability of funds will also be key to developing countries planning effectively for climate action.”

On the 2018 Talanoa Dialogue, which continues in its preparatory phase, Endalew submitted: “The Talanoa Dialogue must build to a strong conclusion at COP24 that drives increased ambition and support, as well as enhanced national action and pledges, to put us on track to limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The LDCs know that the only way to achieve the 1.5°C temperature goal is through all countries taking on their fair share of the collective action required to bridge the gap in ambition. Those countries with greater capacity and responsibility need to step up.”

The LDC Group says it looks forward to working with other countries to develop a strong package of guidelines to implement the Paris Agreement.

As an official observer to the UNFCCC, ACT Alliance has reportedly sent a delegation of policy experts to engage with the Bangkok negotiations and to support the efforts of most vulnerable developing countries while holding government accountable to the decisions they made in Paris in 2015.