BONN, GERMANY (May 26, 2012)– The first Intersessional of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began Monday, May 14, 2012 and ended Friday, May 25, 2012. During the 11 days of negotiations Parties tackled complex technical issues in the 36th session of the Subsidiary Bodies’ on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA36) and Implementation (SBI36) while also grappling with the many political issues within the 15th session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), the 17th session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the first session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP). While there was progress in the Subsidiary Bodies and the KP on technical issues, political issues plagued advancement in the ADP and the LCA. Due to disagreements on the provisional agenda, after several informal consultations by the interim chair of the ADP, a revised agenda of the ADP was only adopted the morning of the last day of negotiations with the official chair of the ADP not being appointed until that afternoon. Similarly, in LCA while spin-off groups were agreed on some issues, mainly in mitigation and shared vision, some countries also wanted spin-off groups on other issues in the Bali Action Plan, including adaptation, finance, capacity building, response measures and technology.
WEDO led gender and climate change efforts through advocacy strategy co-coordinators, Rachel Harris and Sandra Freitas and worked with partners from the GGCA network including GGCA Coordinator, Nathalie Eddy. Keeping a close eye on key thematic areas including adaptation and finance in the Subsidiary Bodies, the advocacy co-coordinators also worked with members of the Women and Gender Constituency to write interventions, including an intervention delivered by Rachel Harris (see video below) at an informal session on consultations with the Presidency of the 18th Conference of the Parties, Qatar. Gender equality issues were taken into account in some of the conclusions of the subsidiary bodies as well as in the draft decisions that will be considered at COP18 in Qatar. In the late summer of this year there will be another UNFCCC Intersessional in Bangkok, Thailand to begin to work substantively on the newly adopted agenda of the ADP as well as to continue to work through some of the political issues of the LCA and KP, which have deadlines to meet by COP18. As these negotiations occur after the Rio+20 Conference, WEDO will also carry through important commitments made to gender and climate change/sustainable development to the UNFCCC. Through the political and technical details of the negotiations WEDO will continue to work with partners to push for a gender responsive global climate change agreement.
Click here to download a full compilation of references to women and gender coming out of Bonn 2012, as well as all interventions delivered by the Women and Gender Constituency.
