ADP Draft Agreement Adopted

Week one of COP21 is drawing to a close with a newly revised draft document of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform of Enhanced Action (ADP) released Saturday morning.  The majority of the week’s contentious negotiations surrounded this text, which is charged with creating a framework of action on climate change for the period beyond 2020. 

Issues of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technology transfer, and long term goal were debated throughout the 12 sessions of the ADP, within full meetings as well as numerous “spin-off” groups.  These meetings broke down every article word by word, attempting to find consensus amongst the views of the 196 parties.  Issues that negotiators were unable to resolve in this round of negotiations were put into brackets and have been left for national ministers to debate next week. 

A “bridging” version of the text was complied by the the chair group which highlighted the common principles and possible avenues of compromise based off of the suggestions and requests of all parties.  These suggestions by the chair, along with “reflections,” were incorporated at the end of the draft document. 

Statements from parties after the adoption of the the draft agreement highlighted both the optimism from the “welcomed progress” and the “good faith” of many parties, but also articulated the disagreements that remain to be decided.  Major differences in the understanding of responsibility for climate change elaborated within the governing Convention and how to implement these principles in the agreement remain to be agreed upon, to ensure that temperature rise does not surpass 2 degrees.   

Text of the agreement can be found here:

http://unfccc.int/files/bodies/awg/application/pdf/draft_paris_outcome_rev_5dec15.pdf

A moment by moment summary of negotiations throughout the week can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19M59-wHuataEZh8f6joZ_Mvay3IZCbZfaxJKN-H_Bk0/edit