Pretoria - Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa has arrived in Paris for the informal Ministerial Consultations ahead of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21).
The COP21 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be hosted in France from 30 November to 11 December 2015.
The informal Ministerial Consultation is being hosted by the incoming COP 21 President, France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, from 6-7 September 2015.
The meeting is the third Ministerial consultation following the last two held in Lima, Peru, and Paris, France, in March, May and July 2015, respectively.
The aim of the Paris consultations, which starts today is to support the formal process under the UNFCCC in order to ensure the broad outlines of the draft agreement may be clear as early as October in order to maximise the chances of a success at COP 21.
The Ministerial Consultation will focus on adaptation and loss and damage caused by climate change, and means of implementation of a new legal agreement.
The Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP) for Enhanced Action agreed at a meeting in Bonn, last week, to provide the Co-Chairs of the ADP to revise the negotiations text, or what is known as Co-Chairs’ tool, with a view of tabling the revised Co-Chairs tool before the next session of negotiators which will take place in October, in Bonn.
Finally the outcomes of the discussions by the Ministers will give direction to the formal ADP negotiations under the UNFCCC negotiations. – SAnews.gov.za
