Dr. Barbara Hendricks

20 years of UN Climate Convention - A time to reflect both on past successes and future challenges

Since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force two decades ago, climate change has escaped its environment niche. Now it is a defining issue of our times, an unprecedented challenge requiring an all-encompassing response. The Climate Convention is the vehicle for channeling this response. Inevitably it touches so much of our lives. How we generate and consume energy. How we grow food or build houses. How we rethink our infrastructure and transportation systems so that they are robust and efficient.

These issues demand durable solutions. In twenty years of negotiating and working under the Climate Convention we have made great strides:

• The global community is tackling climate change together, with targets and national programmes to reduce emissions in the great majority of countries. Many of them, including Germany, recognize and embrace the benefits of low-carbon transformation.
• Considerable investments, both private and public, are flowing into climate protection, including through technology cooperation and capacity building. Enhanced transparency of mitigation efforts and finance streams is accelerating these flows.
• The importance of adaptation to the consequences of climate change is undisputed, on a par with climate mitigation. Many countries have dedicated plans. Support for adaptation measures is growing.
• The institutions created under the Convention provide transparency, facilitate monitoring and underpin delivery of climate action.
• The scientific basis for understanding climate change has been consolidated worldwide; ensuring policy-makers are clear on the operational implications.

This amounts to a great deal of progress. Without the focal point of the Climate Convention, it is unlikely we would have made it this far.

The challenge however does not diminish. We must still complete the task of negotiating a new agreement, setting all states on a path that keeps temperature rise under 2°C. Paris is the starting line for a global race to perform a fundamental transformation. We must rethink our long-term economic structures so that they are both climate-resilient and low-emitting. The world of today is already a long way from the one of 1994 when the Climate Convention was drafted. The pace will not slacken. Our responses for the future must reflect the changing realities: worsening climate impacts, the socio-economic and geopolitical consequences, deepening scientific understanding, technological advances and the demand for more prosperity.

Germany has been privileged to provide a home to the Convention Secretariat. Its support has been invaluable to the smooth running of the UN negotiations. This in turn has enabled states to focus on the political challenges involved in tackling climate change. Together we have managed over twenty years to raise awareness considerably - both in public and amongst scientists and politicians. My birthday wish for the Climate Convention is that this translates into the global political momentum necessary to fulfill our common goals.

Dr. Barbara Hendricks, German Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety

Yvo de Boer

Growing up can be a painful process. After the euphoria of Rio, the successful entry into force of the UNFCCC and the agreement of the Kyoto Protocol, the process has arguably entered its troubled teens, culminating in a very rough Copenhagen birthday party. Or has it? Yes, emissions are heading in the wrong direction, but understanding of the science and willingness to act are not. The steps are still too modest, but there is now almost universal engagement on climate action, from governments, from cities, and increasingly from the private sector. When full adulthood is reached at COP 21 in Paris, a lasting platform must be created that allows global efforts to rise to the ultimate challenge the Climate Convention still poses.

Michael Zammit Cutajar

The 1992 Convention has served well as a "framework", restrictive though that qualifier may have seemed at the time. Building on a scientific assessment then in its infancy, the Convention placed a little-known issue on the global agenda, set out principles for cooperative action to address it and put up signposts for the directions that action could take. The contents of the current negotiations on a post-2020 regime - mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building and transparency - can all be traced back to those signposts.

If the shelves of the Convention are scantily stocked with success after two decades, it is not because of the scope of the framework, but because of the lack of political commitment by the Convention Parties to fill it out. The Kyoto Protocol was a moment of hope, undermined by the withdrawal of the lead actor.

Facing the expectation of a strong political signal from Paris next year, the Parties can regenerate hope and ambition by mobilizing the dynamics of non-State actors. Corporate strategists take the long view that can give a sense of the profits to be gained from investment in a cleaner economy - and of the risks inherent in hanging on to fossil-fuel assets past their use-by date. Municipal leaders with their ears to the grass roots can understand the benefits of reducing air pollution and traffic congestion in climate-friendly ways. In fashioning their national "contributions" to a new intergovernmental agreement on climate action, governments should construct frameworks and incentives for responsible initiatives from these quarters.

That said, the risk of "green-wash" by non-State actors is real. They should be held to credible verification of the results of their actions. Accountability for all actors must be at the core of the post-2020 regime.

If there is one element that should be added to the framework Convention itself, it is a quantified mitigation objective for 2050 (e.g. carbon neutrality) towards which national targets would converge, and against which successive phases of effort would be assessed.