News

The forty-fourth sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 44) and  Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 44) as well as the first session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA 1) will take place from 16 to 26 May 2016, in Bonn, Germany. This is the first meeting taking place since the adoption of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement sets a clear vision for the world to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C or 1.5°C through a full decarbonisation of the global economy. It also provides a framework to improve action on mitigation, adaptation and finance through regular reviews and renewed commitments for all countries simultaneously.

With the Paris Agreement clearly setting out the task that lays ahead, this year Parties need to create provisions under the Paris Agreement that will enable, incentivise and enforce action at a national level. This requires a delicate balancing of provisions that enable national action and those that create obligations. And unions have a key role to play to keep their governments accountable and play an active role towards a just transition in every sector and every company.

We cannot forget that current commitments are wholly inadequate to match the target set in Paris: all together they would take us to a 3°C temperature increase. That means that all countries need to raise their ambitions and submit new targets for review by 2018. On climate finance, a roadmap to the US$100 billion annually is urgently required. This roadmap must close the financing gap in preparing for and addressing rising climate impacts, be rooted in predictability and based on transparency between developed and developing countries. 

The success of COP21 and Paris Agreement will be judged  based on the scale of results achieved by countries in the following years and decades.