Background

The historic unprecedented Paris Agreement at 21^st United Nations Conference on Climate Change aka COP21 in 2015 sparked the global hopes for climate resilient sustainable future. Thus, COP22 held in Marrakech Morocco from 7 to 18^th November, 2016 was expected to be the COP of Action/Implementation. It was expected that this COP 22 will build a concrete roadmap on attaining the ultimate goal of limiting global rise to temperature to well below two degree Celsius by 2100.

What we gained at COP22?

The first week of COP22 was a bit depressing and confusing especially with the results of US Presidential election. Everyone was wandering what next? The slower pace of negotiations in the first week somehow threatened the theme of COP22 which aimed at drawing a way forward in terms of technology and methodology to meet the Paris Agreement. The rumor was that the Agreement came into force (4^th November), far earlier than what predicted so parties weren?t prepared enough to advocate their positions accordingly. However in the second week there were some optimistic decisions, including approval of a five year work plan on loss and damage starting in 2017. Altogether 35 decisions were adopted which sets 2018 as the deadline for parties to develop rulebook for implementation of the agreement. Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action was establish which facilitates the involvement of non- state actors in pre 2020 climate action, supported by High Level Climate Champions H.E Hakima El Haite and H.E Laurence Tubiana. Finance was controversial as always but the developed countries reaffirmed their annual $100 billion mobilization goal. Also the parties decided that the Adaptation Fund under Kyoto Protocol would serve the PA pending decisions on governance.

My Engagement at COP22

I received the accreditation for attending week one (7 to 13^th November) of COP22 via my youth association CliMates. At this COP I followed the three different thematic (Gender, Agriculture mainly livestock production and Adaptation) and their interrelation to climate change. As such I attended the Subsidiary Body of Implementation (SBI) informal consultations on Gender and Climate Change also the daily caucus of Women and Gender Constituency. From 8 to 9am in everyday, YOUNGO (youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) had meetings where youth representatives from different organization used to be discuss on different activities and agenda of YOUNGO working groups and share information about any relevant side event or action. Also we had the booth of Ministry of Population and Environment (MoPE), Government of Nepal jointly with International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) where there were posters about the Nepal Climate Change Support Program (NCCSP). I spent most of my time in this booth and got to build networking with the national delegations from my country. I also attended few session of Daily Track by the Climate Tracker organization which was so useful in understanding the entire progress and proceedings of negotiations inside the blue zone of COP22. Besides these hustle and bustle, we used to have brief meetings within the CliMates delegates so as to reflect our activities and agendas. Also, I spent time in visiting the country pavilion, networking with the Asian Folks at COP and reporting my daily activity for Cop Live (online sharing platform created by CliMates).

To Conclude

Of course, there are so many decisions and agendas which need to have a clearer mandate including transparency and governance but parties have decided to carry on the discussions in upcoming COP23 which will be hosted by Fiji in Bonn. The key message everyone took home is that a single country can?t outbreak the agreement built together by 195 countries and if the climate change itself can?t stop us, definitely we can overrule one president.