UN Climate Change Negotiations: Last Tango in Paris?

Citation

Savaresi A (2015) UN Climate Change Negotiations: Last Tango in Paris?. EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, 10.11.2015. http://www.ejiltalk.org/un-climate-change-negotiations-last-tango-in-paris/

Abstract
The Paris Climate Change Conference starting on 30 November 2015 is tasked to set the world on a path to address the greatest challenge to ever face humankind, by adopting a new climate agreement. It was hoped that agreement in Paris would bring an end to the impasse that has long affected international climate governance. However, the outlook for the conference is rather bleak.We arejust a few weeks away from the conference, butParties remain far from reaching any agreement. Negotiations under the body entrusted to draft the text of the Paris agreement, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), have abundantly shown that Parties’ views on how to tackle climate change still significantly diverge. At the end of the last ADP session before Paris, progress on the preparation of the text of the agreement remained limited. In fact, Parties even backtracked on the little compromise they had managed to achieve at earlier ADP sessions. This post reflects on the difficulties experienced in the work of the ADP and on their implications for the Paris conference.