Negotiating texts and final agreement from COP21, the 21st Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris in December 2015.
Delegates from 195 countries attended with the aim of reaching agreement on the timetable and actions to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a level that limits the global average temperature increase to "below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels".
There were high hopes that this conference may be the first to deliver a new binding agreement to succeed the 1992 Kyoto. In particular, in Durban in 2011, all countries agreed that an “outcome with legal force ... and applicable to all parties, would be adopted at the conference in December 2015.”
This hope was realised with the agreement of a binding text. However, many felt that this came at the cost of a weak text which offered little promise of keeping global warming "below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels".
See datapackage.json for best listing - nice online view here.
- 23 Oct 2015 - final draft text for COP21 (PDF) (Word Version)
- Results of negotiations at COP21 itself are being posted here: http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/items/9326.php
- Other texts can be found in
datapackage.json
The climate negotiations can be hard to follow. As a large scale international negotiation there are bewildering number of acronyms, subgroups, non-papers, unofficial non-papers, chairs, co-chairs and more.
Aside: i use the term treaty and protocol interchangeably here to mean a legal instrument or other outcome with legal force on the various parties.
The key thing for our purposes is to understand is that negotiation on the treaty itself takes place in what is called the "Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action" or ADP for short. As the UN site explains:
What is the ADP?
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is a subsidiary body that was established by decision 1/CP.17 in December 2011. The mandate of the ADP is to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties, which is to be completed no later than 2015 in order for it to be adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.
The key mandate for the ADP was:
The COP, by pdf-icon decision 1/CP.17, launched a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties (also referred to as the 2015 agreement), which shall be adopted at the twenty-first session of the COP, in 2015, for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.
According to decision 2/CP.18, the ADP is to consider elements for a draft negotiating text no later than at its session to be held in conjunction with COP 20, in December 2014, with a view to making available a negotiating text before May 2015.
The ADP's job was to prepare a draft negotiating text by May 2015 which would then be debated at Paris. Ultimately pre-negotiations took longer and a final draft text was only released on 23 October 2015.