Paris 2015 COP21 international preparatory meeting

 

The 5th IPCC report published throughout 2013 and 2014 has confirmed the impact of human activities on climate change and the growing impacts of climate change across all continents. The report also alerted the international community on the major risks of delaying drastic efforts to mitigate GHG emissions and scale up adaptation actions.  

 

In Durban end 2011, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decided to dedicate the next four years to negotiating and adopting a global and legally-binding agreement to reduce GHG emissions worldwide and fund adaptation measures in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. The UNFCCC decided to adopt this agreement by COP21 in Paris (i.e. the 21st Conference of Parties under the UNFCCC or COP21) end 2015, and to prepare for it in New York at the UNSG Climate Summit in September 2014, the pre-COP in Venezuela in November and COP20 in Lima, in December 2014. 

 

Since the negotiations are still caught in a deadlock, namely because of vested private interests, a vast majority of the civil society organisations present at the Warsaw Conference end 2013 (COP19) decided to walk out on the negotiations. All these organisations believed that the widest possible citizen mobilisation back home is needed to break the deadlock in the negotiations and take drastic action on adaptation and mitigation in all countries, in line with their respective responsibilities and capabilities.

 

In light of this, a number of French civil society organisations organised two seminars in January and April 2014 to start preparing for the upcoming political moments. Each seminar brought together a hundred participants, representing close to all environmentalist organisations in France, the key development and humanitarian organisations, the anti-globalization movement and the major trade union organisations (see, in french only, http://seminaireclimat.wordpress.com/).

 

These seminars made it clear that there is willingness to facilitate and mutualise local initiatives to mobilise citizens; and to create a common space/dynamic/CSO framework for COP21.

We may not all agree on the best instruments to stop climate change, whether market mechanisms should play a role, and how to avoid financializing natural resources. We may use very diverse means of action and expression. However, we have decided to accept this diversity in our proposed solutions and means of actions because we believe that more importantly, we need to build a common and open space to welcome the tens of thousands of activists that will come to Paris during COP21, to discuss strategy, organise actions,mobilise as broadly as possible and remind the world of our key asks and the scale of the issue we are facing. 

 

To design these campaigns, build this international space for COP21 and support efforts by Latin-American civil society in preparing for Caracas and Lima, we propose to hold an international preparatory meeting on the 23rd and 24th of August 2014, in Paris. The meeting would aim to take stock of the negotiation dynamics, share each network’s positions and mobilisation initiatives and discuss political strategies for the upcoming political moments in 2014 and 2015. A more detailed agenda will be circulated by end of June.