Climate Change

Japan and Brazil, as Co-Chairs, have hosted the Informal Meeting on Further Actions against Climate Change (commonly known as the Japan-Brazil Informal Meeting) in Tokyo every year since 2002. The objective of the meeting is to have discussions in frank and informal manner among lead negotiators and other officials from various countries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s meeting was held in a virtual format, and participants discussed the outlooks and challenges of negotiations toward COP26 that was postponed to the coming November.

(1) Date:

Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th of March

(2) Venue:

Virtual

(3) Co-Chairs:

(Japan) Ambassador, Mr. Keiichi Ono, Assistant Vice-Minister and Director-General for Global Issues, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(Brazil) Ambassador, Mr. Fabio Marzano, Vice-Minister for National Sovereignty and Citizenship Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Participants:

Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Belize, Bhutan, Brazil, Canada, Chile (COP25 Presidency), China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Ethiopia, European Union, France, Gabon, Germany, Guinea, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Panama, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom (COP26 Presidency) and United States.

Observers:

The UNFCCC Secretariat, SBI and SBSTA Chairs, and Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).

(1) Session 1 “Expectations for COP26”

In Session 1, participants expressed their views mainly on how to proceed with the discussions toward COP26 of this coming November and expectations of outcomes for COP26, considering lessons learned from last year with almost no face-to-face negotiation taking place.
They also expressed their high expectations for the success of COP26 to fully implement the Paris Agreement. Some of them expressed their views that Parties need to continue discussions and make progress in the preparatory work toward COP26 even in a virtual format, in referring to the meaningful online discussions such as those during “June Momentum” and “Climate Dialogues” organized by the UNFCCC Secretariat last June and last November respectively. On the other hand, others pointed out the issues derived from the Internet connectivity, time-zone and the difficulty in the coordination within each negotiation group, and expressed their concerns in continuing the preparatory work in a virtual format.
In addition to negotiation agenda items, participants shared latest information on their climate change policies, including updated NDCs (nationally determined contributions), declaration of aiming for carbon neutrality, as well as setting long term strategies and adaptation plans.

(2) Session 2 “Outlook of each negotiation agenda item under the Paris Agreement”

In Session 2, participants expressed their views on each agenda item to be dealt with in COP26 and necessary future work for those items.
Participants while taking account of the fact that the implementation period of the Paris Agreement has already started, recognized the adoption of the rulebooks on the items in COP26 to be quite important, as Article 6 (market mechanisms) has been a continuing issue since COP24 and the Parties are supposed to submit their first Biennial Transparency Reports by 2024 according to Article 13 (transparency framework). Some expressed the view that the adaptation issues would be important in COP26, as its importance is increasing for developed and developing countries alike, which are both subject to climate change impacts.
As to climate finance, discussions took place on the goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion annually by 2020 and mobilization of private finance and the importance of the post-2025 goal was also mentioned.
Common Time Frame, Loss & Damage and Koronivia joint work on agriculture were also discussed.
Participants recognized the necessity to build common understandings among Parties to make progress in the discussions on these items by using informal expert sessions presided by the SBSTA and the SBI chairs and informal consultations by the COP Presidencies.