UN climate process needs urgent overhaul: Experts

BAKU: Amid reports on how COP officials are facilitating discussions on fossil fuel deals, a group of prominent scientists, advocates, and policy leaders – including former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, former head of the UN climate change body Christiana Figueres, and former Ireland President Mary Robinson – have called for an urgent overhaul of the UN climate process. They argue that it needs “a shift from negotiation to implementation”.
“28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure cannot deliver change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP,” they said in an open letter to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres and executive secretary of UN climate change secretariat Simon Stiell.
Calling for “COP reform“, they said the shift is needed to enable the COP to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.
Calling themselves friends of the COP (conference of parties) who believe in the important role UNFCCC has played in ensuring ambition on climate change, they extended seven suggestions to reform the process and called for strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out from fossil energy.
Besides asking for improving the selection process of COP presidencies, their other suggestions include delivery of concrete action with speed and scale; strengthening of mechanisms to hold countries accountable for climate targets; robust tracking of climate financing; amplifying voice of authoritative science; recognising interdependencies between poverty, inequality and instability; and enhancing equitable representation.