20 September 2022

Earlier this month LRI participated in the annual Oxford seminar organised by the European Capacity Building Initiative, an Initiative in which LRI is a lead member organisation. Trust building is the leitmotiv of the seminar: it provides an opportunity for senior negotiators from developing countries and from Europe to meet in an informal setting and share views on key negotiation topics that will be on the agenda of the next COP. Key negotiation groups from the developing world, such as BASIC, the LDC Group, the Africa Group, AOSIS and AILAC, are represented in these discussions by their Chairs and/or member countries.

This year, thirty or so negotiators met over 3 days and discussed a range of issues including, for example:

• the work programmes set up under the Global Goal on Adaptation and pre-2030 mitigation ambition and how to focus discussions and process to ensure successful outcomes;
• the new collective quantified goal on climate finance and institutional arrangements that might be needed to operationalize it once finalised;
• aligning financial flows with the Paris Agreement goals;
• institutional arrangements for the Santiago Network on Loss & Damage;
• what the structure and functionality of a facility to finance loss and damage might look like;
• arrangements for intergovernmental meetings and possible solutions to the problems created by the proliferation of agenda items, meetings, mandates and processes at UNFCCC sessions; and
• gender balance at COPs, SBs and in constituted bodies.

With the historic buildings of Magdalen and New College as the backdrop, negotiators listened to the position of other groups and countries on specific issues and engaged in frank and open exchanges. This will hopefully have brought them a step closer as they prepare for COP27 in Egypt in November.

10 July 2022

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), in collaboration with several universities, held the second Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice at Kenyatta University in Nairobi from 27 June to 9 July 2022. Around 170 activities, academics and practitioners from almost 30 different African countries attended the meeting in person. Many more followed it virtually.

The summer school provides a forum to discuss the causes and effects of climate change, learn new skills, network and share experiences as well as information. In this way, PACJA aims is to build up a pool of African climate justice advocates who can shape the political narrative and strengthen the voices of communities that are at the front line of climate change.

The theme of this year’s summer school was capacity building to successfully engage with the UNFCCC process and the African COP in Egypt in November this year. As a long-standing partner and supporter of PACJA, LRI was invited to introduce participants to climate law, the UNFCCC and COP27.  LRI trustee Seth Osafo did so by video link from Ghana, LRI director Christoph Schwarte in person during the second week of the meeting.

20 June 2022

In Bonn, during the meeting of the UNFCCC subsidiary bodies from 6 to 16 June, parties begun work under some of the mandates adopted at the climate conference in Glasgow last year to implement the Paris Agreement. This included the need for more ambitious climate action, deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, enhanced resilience to adapt to the effects of climate change and financial support for developing countries.

The negotiations in Bonn were characterised by several, for the UNFCCC process, unusually inclusive discussion formats. During the dialogues on finance for loss and damage and the global goal on adaptation civil society observer organisations as well as other stakeholders took the floor and contributed to the discussions. As part of the first technical dialogue to review collective progress towards achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals participants moved between tables “world café style”.

As usual when there is a physical meeting, LRI lawyers were on site and on call to assist delegates from climate vulnerable developing countries and civil society observer organisations. This year they were accompanied by lawyer volunteers from Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Germany and the UK. We are grateful for their engagement and support!

The legal questions raised by delegates broadly reflected the different strands of the discussion in Bonn. They related to raising finance specifically for adaptation purposes, the terminology around loss and damage as well as the role and operational set-up of the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage. Other specific legal questions that have come up concerned, for example, the relationship between different international treaty regimes or whether the UNFCCC and its secretariat can be recognised as an international organisation.