Die Klima-Konferenz von Lima: Auf dem Weg zum Pariser Abkommen 2015

The Paris conference on climate change is fast approaching, with an international community of countries pressing hard for a new climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol and to make way for the creation of a long-term climate change architecture. The latest session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in December 2015 in Lima (Peru), marked the beginning of the final year of intense negotiations. The COP duly prepared the field by issuing a first draft working version of the Paris Agreement, the 40-page Elements document pre-defining the structure of the text and presenting a wide set of options for the different battle zones, including on country differentiation (the Firewall debate), finance, and markets. The Lima conference also issued further guidance on how countries should report on their intended nationally-determined contributions (INDCs) and witnessed the creation of the Lima Paris Action Agenda, a dedicated platform to involve non-state actors in the processes of mitigation and adaptation policy. The discussions on the legal form and format of the Paris Agreement remain ongoing. Many countries favor the adoption of a protocol for ratification. Other countries, however, tend to prefer a looser form, anticipating domestic challenges for a ratification process (notably the U.S.). Another mostly unresolved issue concerns the way the INDCs are anchored (or moored) to the Paris Agreement. Lima has pushed countries towards a compromise in Paris. However, a success for this years' conference is anything but a cut and dried outcome.