Bonn Climate Change Conference - UNEP Events

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1)UNEP's Global Adaptation Network held Adaptation Knowledge Day on Saturday 6th June.This is the sixth successive year in which AKD has been held during the Bonn climate meetings.  About 90 people participated in the event. The keynote address was given by Saleemul Huq of Bangladesh's International Centre for Climate Change and Development. Other speakers were from the Peruvian Presidency of UNFCCC CoP20, US Environmental Protection Agency, CTCN (Jukka Uosukainen), NAP Global Network, UNDP, FAO, IUCN and GEF Secretariat. The main theme of the day was ways to improve adaptation knowledge exchange. Useful lessons emerged from the discussions on what works and what does not. These lessons can be incorporated into GAN's future work. The day also strengthened GAN's role as a trusted partner in the field of adaptation knowledge exchange, working closely with both UNFCCC bodies, and non-UNFCCC organisations.

2)UNEP participation in Technical Expert Meetings (Energy Efficiency) 

The June Technical Expert Meetings on the margins focused on mitigation opportunities regarding renewable energy and energy efficiency. UNEP worked closely with the UNFCCC to develop the agenda, identify speakers and UNEP also served as panel members at the TEMs. Parties discussed the contributions of the TEMs in the context of raising pre-2020 ambition. Developing countries want the TEMs to become more concrete as well as focus on raising adaptation ambition. All countries were in favour of the TEMs process to continue until 2020.

3)UNEP/ UNEP-DTU side event on INDCs (Friday 5 June)

Close to 60 participants attended the side-event. Country presentations by Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia, who provided comprehensive information on the current status of their INDCs. Both countries made reference to including adaptation in their INDCs. Niklas Hone (a member of UNEP’s INDC expert team) provided an update on the current INDCs that have been submitted to the UNFCCC. He also outlined UNEP’s approach to the assessment of INDCs, emphasising the methodology (as well as challenges) for assessing the global impact of the INDCs on GHG emissions.

4)1-Gigaton Coalition

The 1Gigaton Coalition held its first annual meeting on 6 June which was attended by about 25 partners. The aim of this first meeting was to update partners on progress with data collection and analysis and the publication of the Coalition's first report. Participants agreed to keeping the structure of the Coalition lean and effective, and were supportive of the way forward to focus on producing a 'credible' first report at the Paris COP showing the contribution from the energy sector to contribute to the meeting the 2020 emissions gap.

5)UNEP report on actions by non-state actors.

The side-event event took place on Friday 5 June. Presenters highlighted that the report focused on the quantitative assessment of emission reduction potential of 15 initiatives by non-state actors (these 15 have quantitative emission reduction targets and the capacity to deliver). The main finding of the report was the “action of non-state actors are not negligible” and can “support not replace commitments by governments”. The Press release can be found here.