While the Moroccan and Fijian Presidencies undertake informal consultations on the Facilitative Dialogue 2018, and before hearing about Parties‘ expectations, ECO has some ideas about the direction of travel for FD2018. Actually it’s simple:
Ambition Mechanism = Facilitative Dialogue 2018 + Second Periodic Science Review + Global Stocktake 2023
FD2018 is the next big moment to strengthen the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement. We all know that the emissions gap is much too wide. Waiting for 2023 and ambition rising actions initiated by the Global Stocktake would be a huge delay that we can’t afford.
Instead of thinking of it as a single isolated event, Parties might prefer to leverage regional and high level meetings for the FD2018. In 2018, climate change must surely be on the international agenda: the G7 and G20, the World Economic Forum, the Climate Vulnerable Forum, Petersburg Dialogue, even a possible 1.5°C Forum to discuss the IPCC Special Report. And all of those can feed into the outcome of the FD2018.
Parties should welcome inputs to the FD2018, including those from non-state actors – for example, the Global Climate Action Summit in California in September 2018, and from researchers, think tanks and others.
FD2018 can be envisioned as two parts: a technical phase and a political phase. Most importantly, though, the outcome of the FD2018 should lead to an update, revision and/or enhancement of the NDCs by 2020.
Most of all, we need to close the gap! For that, we need a clear, strong, but adjustable outline on the FD2018 at COP23 — maybe a combination of a COP23 decision and an informal way of capturing the outcome. This would create the political space for creative ideas on how to enhance NDCs. That way, FD2018 could lead to a concrete political outcome that keeps us below 1.5°C.
