27 March 2019

Around two hundred Members of the Burundi Parliament took part in a workshop to promote parliamentary engagement in climate change related actions in the country. The workshop, held on 22nd March in Bujumbura, was organised by the Burundi National Assembly in conjunction with the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Environment. It was attended by the President of the National Assembly and the two Deputy Speakers of the Senate and National Assembly.

The workshop opened with some briefing on anthropogenic climate change causes and impacts in the Burundian context. LRI gave presentations on the Paris Agreement and the rules for its implementation (the so-called Rulebook) adopted at COP24, in December 2018, and highlighted those areas where more work will need to be done this year.

The next presentation focussed on the implications of the Paris Agreement and Rulebook for Burundi, with Ms. Renilde Ndayishimiye, until recently UNFCCC focal point for Burundi, introducing participants to the country’s nationally determined contribution and highlighting actions needed to fully implement the Agreement, and challenges and opportunities related to this.

The meeting provided an opportunity to showcase LRI’s new climate legislation advice portal, developed in collaboration with UN Environment, as a resource tool for parliamentarians and government policy makers engaged in law review and development at domestic level. The final session in invited participants to discuss ways in which parliamentarians can further support climate action in Burundi through legislation and institutional reforms.

20 March 2019

Over 40 law and policy makers attended a one-day roundtable workshop on the legal preparedness for the implementation of the Paris Agreement on 14 March 2019 in Lagos, Nigeria. Workshop participants included representatives of various government departments and agencies, academia, civil society and the private sector. Most of the participants were lawyers and many travelled to Lagos from other parts of Nigeria (e.g. Abuja and the Ogun, Oyo, Delta, and Abia States).

The meeting was organised by the Environmental Resource Centre (ERC) in Lagos in close collaboration with LRI. Important technical and financial support was provided by Advocates for International Development (A4ID) under the UK Aid sponsored Rule of Law Expertise (Role UK) Programme.

The objective of the meeting was to introduce the 2015 Paris Agreement and the rules for its implementation as adopted in 2018 (the so called Paris Agreement Rulebook) and analyse their implications for Nigeria. Law and policy makers who attended the workshop will be able to champion climate responses at the Federal and state level, and in that context, ensure that Nigeria will benefit from provisions of the new agreement.

The meeting included three technical presentations by Huzi Mshelia (ERC), Christoph Schwarte (LRI) and Dr Peter Tarfa, the UNFCCC focal point for Nigeria. During his presentation, the latter underlined the need for legal and technical support in the international climate negotiations as well as in domestic efforts to implement the Paris Agreement.

In response, participants of the meeting agreed to establish a Legal Working Group (LWG) on climate governance in Nigeria to support the national government in the UNFCCC process and in strengthening domestic legislation. The group will include legal advisers from different Federal and State ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), the private sector, NGOs and academia.

31 January 2019

On Friday 25 January, LRI in collaboration with the Dickson Poon School of Law and UN Environment facilitated a round table workshop on legal readiness for climate finance at King’s College, London.

To respond to the adverse effects of climate change, developing countries require significant new and additional financial resources. Industrialised countries have promised to take the lead in mobilising climate finance. To date, however, many poor and particularly climate vulnerable developing countries do not only lack the financial resources for crucial adaptation actions but even the funds required to create the basic institutional governance framework for mainstreaming climate change into general law and policy making.

The roundtable workshop brought together regulators, academics and practitioners to discuss lessons learnt and approaches in different jurisdictions on how to increase flows of private capital. Different sessions looked at the role regulators can play, the development of a climate finance toolkit and specific approaches to raising climate finance.  Oscar Njugune of Kenya’s International Financial Centre Authority commented on the workshop: “Certainly from a Kenyan policy making perspective it has provided me with some key action items to take forward, as well as opened up communication channels with a number of important stakeholders with whom we can take forward discussions on a bilateral basis.”

9 January 2019

Hosted by Poland, the 24^th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP24) took place in Katowice on 2 – 14 December 2018. The meeting’s main goal was to finalise the detailed rules for the implementation of the Paris Agreement – the so-called Rulebook – thereby enabling parties to turn their commitments into climate action. To a large extent, the conference formally delivered on this, as substantive decisions were adopted in all but one (on market and non-market mechanisms) areas of the Paris Agreement. However, in many areas, decision on important sub-items was deferred.

Aside from the adoption of the Rulebook, parties completed the political phase of the Talanoa Dialogue, a year-long facilitative dialogue to take stock of progress on climate action to date, inform the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in 2020 and boost collective ambition. Many had hoped for a strong political signal on ambition from the Talanoa. The final decision text, however, merely ‘takes note’ of the Dialogue and invites parties to consider its outcome in preparing their NDCs and in their efforts to enhance pre-2020 ambition.

Four qualified lawyers, two from private practice and two from academia, supported LRI’s work on the ground whilst volunteers in the London Situation Room and expert advisers from the LRI roster assisted with the advice service remotely. Overall we received 40 queries, mostly from particularly climate vulnerable developing country parties and the group of least developed countries. They reflected the ever-increasing number of subject areas under discussion as well as the dynamics of the negotiations: initially we undertook some broader research assignments, then helped to “word-smith” text and eventually were asked to help analyse the Katowice outcomes and explain what they could mean for national legislation.

LRI was also invited to showcase its work at a side event hosted by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Principles of Effective Capacity Building: Supporting the Implementation of the Paris Agreement. This was an opportunity, in particular, to showcase a pilot project developed over the last two years in Cameroon, which tests a ‘bottom-up’, or demand and community driven approach to law review and development.

12 September 2018

UNFCCC Parties met in Bangkok on 4 – 9 September 2018 to advance their work on the Paris Agreement work programme (PAWP), the set of rules and guidelines needed to operationalize the Paris Agreement, which is due to be adopted at COP24 in Katowice in December this year.

Despite the intense pace of work, progress in Bangkok was uneven, with the issues of clarity on finance and how to reflect differentiation between developing and developed countries amongst the main sticking points. With an ‘PAWP compilation’ at the end of the session still running at over 300 pages long, Parties have their work cut out if COP24 is to deliver a successful outcome.

An LRI team of three lawyers attended the conference. Amongst them was Norarat Nararujaneetanan, a Thai lawyer who said of her experience: “To witness the world uniting and committing to find a solution for our planet through my own eyes is something that I have always been dreaming of. I attended several sessions, on the adaptation communication, Art. 6 market and non-market based mechanisms and response measures. It was interesting to see

political views, leverage and strategies being used by negotiators through the discussions in each session. Not only did I have an opportunity to witness that, but also how we, as legal advisers, can provide a great assistance during the climate negotiations.We received interesting queries from delegates and conducted some research as well as arranged an expert to provide advice for the delegates.”

To help advance Parties’ deliberations, the subsidiary bodies ‘ presiding officers have been mandated to prepare, by mid-October, a joint reflections note addressing progress made to date and identifying ways forward including ‘textual proposals’ to serve as a basis of negotiations in Katowice.

LRI with Cameroonian delegate, Mr. Wagnoun