Today, the twenty-first United Nations Conference of Parties (COP21) kicked off. It is an annual conference on combating climate change, involving all parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The goal of the Convention
That UNFCCC does not contain any binding clauses for the parties. For this, the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997. It had broad goals on cutting emissions, but with binding goals for the parties to it. The first “commitment period” ended in 2012, and in Doha, a second round was discussed, which will last until 2020. However, it is an agreement that is not supported by most countries in the world, and thus is still not in effect.
The goal of the COP21 is to get a legally binding agreement to reduce environmentally harmful emissions and to adapt to a changing climate, which all countries in the world can agree on and contribute to. This is, of course, a VERY ambitious goal, but, as the Dutch Staatssecretaris (Junior Minister) of Infrastructure and Environment, Sharon Dijksma, says: Parijs is een belangrijke stap op weg naar dat doel, Parijs is geen eindstation. (Paris is an important step on the way to that goal, Paris is no final destination).
What do the Dutch want at COP21?
Mrs. Dijksma put forward that een nieuw mondiaal klimaatakkoord kansen [biedt] voor innovatie waarmee de wereldeconomie vergroent. Het Nederlandse bedrijfsleven kan daarin een voortrekkersrol vervullen. (a new global climate agreement offers opportunities for innovation with which the world economy becomes greener. Dutch companies can take a leading role in that.)
The Dutch also want to emphasize the role of non-state actors more in the new climate agreement in Paris. Non-state actors are organizations which are not part of the government, so companies and non-profits, for example.
Apart from this international effort, the Dutch also have a Klimaatwet (Climate Act) on the table, proposed by Jesse Klaver of GroenLinks and the Diederik Samsom of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA). This Act is supposed to bring emissions into politics much like the budget is now: thus, at Prinsjesdag, it should not just be about money, but also about emissions. It has already been criticized for being only national, even though the climate problem is global, and transcends borders.
It will be interesting to see where COP21 and the Dutch Klimaatwet will lead! What do you think or hope will happen? What does your country want at COP21?
