Cop signals rocky road ahead

摘要

The latest Conference of the Parties (Cop 19) in Warsaw, Poland, failed to meet even modest expectations and — apart from making the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degrada-tion programme operational — delivered few successes. Countries are still far from achieving their goal of completing a negotiating text for Cop 20 in Lima, Peru, next year. Crucially, the Warsaw summit failed to commit to a firm timetable for parties to submit their planned greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions before the deadline — the Paris summit in 2015. Instead, they adopted vague wording whereby parties are invited to prepare their “intended nationally determined contributions” that will form part of the Paris deal, and to communicate these between December 2014 and mid-2015.