Cement Energy and Environment

on the negotiations and a summary of key outcomes: Context: From Agreement To Implementation The landmark Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 marked a dramatic turn in the global climate effort, establishing a new framework combining "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs) with new multilateral mechanisms aimed at ensuring transparency and accountability and promoting greater ambition over time. Although the agreement was designed to apply from 2020 onwards, the unprecedented political momentum on display in Paris carried into 2016, with countries moving more quickly than anticipated to ratify the agreement and bring it into force. In the case of the United States, President Obama was able to accept the agreement through executive action, without seeking Senate advice and consent, because it elaborates the~ UNFCCC (which received Senate approval) and is consistent with domestic law, and because countries' emission targets are not binding. The threshold for entry into force - formal acceptance by 55 countries accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions - was reached October 4 and the agreement took effect one month later. By the close of the Marrakech conference , it had been ratified by 11 ·1 countries representing more than three-fourths of global emissions. The agreement defines parties' basic obligations and establishes new procedures and mechanisms. But for these to be fully operational , their details must be further elaborated. This requires the adoption by parties of an extensive set of decisions known loosely as the "Paris rulebook." Elaborating The Paris Rulebook Further decisions are required on a wide range of topics, including mitigation, adaptation, finance, transparency, a new "global stocktake" process, market mechanisms, and implementation and compliance. The Paris Agreement and an accompanying COP decision assigned responsibility for developing these decisions to multiple bodies, chief among them the newly established Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA). (Others include two standing bodies: the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technology Advice, or SBSTA, and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation, or SBI. ) In most cases, however, the Paris Agreement did not specify a deadline for completing the decisions, saying only that they were to be adopted at CMA 1 - the first meeting of the agreement's new governing body. With the agreement now in force, CMA 1 had to open in Marrakech, but no decisions were ready for adoption. To finesse this unanticipated procedural wrinkle, parties decided to extend CMA 1 beyond Marrakech. They also resolved that the decisions are to be ready "at the latest" when CMA 1 resumes at COP 24 in 2018. The COP and CMA will meet jointly at COP 23 in 2017 to review progress. In subgroups, parties engaged in extensive informal consultations on the issues, offering initial, and in many cases conflicting, views of how different provisions should be elaborated. The only concrete outcomes, however, were procedural in nature, with parties adopting work plans for carrying the discussions forward. These will entail new written submissions from parties, technical workshops and facilitated roundtable discussions. Mitigation The Paris decision calls for further guidance to parties on: the features of NDCs, the up-front information to be provided by parties when communicating future NDCs, and parties' accounting of their NDCs. One major challenge is how to develop guidance that takes into account the different types of NDCs parties have put forward (e.g., absolute emission targets, intensity– based targets, etc.). Some developing countries argued that in some areas, such as up-front information, requirements should be different for developed and developing countries , a view strongly opposed by developed countries. 36 A ,