The One World Trust's ongoing work on climate change centres around the Talanoa dialogue, which is the facilitative process being applied as part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
With the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the close to universal ratification of that agreement by countries in record time – the world has a good foundation for a strong multilaterally based strategy to address climate change. Crucial for this strategy to work is that the commitment towards implementation remains strong and indeed increases over time. The One World Trust therefore initiated a research project in 2018 in partnership with Wageningen University and GLOBE to analyse how the 'ambition mechanism' of the Paris Agreement can work.
The core idea of the ambition mechanism is that every country shall reflect on the outcome of a global assessment of progress towards the agreement's objectives every five years and use this as input to enhance their level of ambition if the assessment (referred to as the 'global stocktake') shows this is necessary.
The first output of this project is the policy brief that OWT brings to COP24 in Katowice in December 2018 looking at how countries are preparing to enable the ambition mechanism. The brief also suggests measures both at national and international level that are key to making the ambition mechanism work. This brief can be read here or downloaded as a PDF below.
The second output of the project is a story capturing key findings that is shared by project leader and OWT Board of Trustee member Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen in the roundtable with Ministers on 11 December at COP24 as part of the final phase of the Talanoa Dialogue, which will be posted here after the event.
In 2002, the One World Trust organised a Wilton Park meeting, leading to the Chanctonbury Initiative and subsequently the formation of the Action for a Global Climate Community (AGCC). This bold initiative sought to establish a global climate community, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that would commit to ambitious targets and a progressive approach to addressing climate change. Written evidence was provided to the UK parliamentary Select Committee on Environment to explain the project.
In May 2008 the AGCC, together with partners including the European Environment Agency, organised a seminar to discuss cooperation between Europe and India on climate change and sustainable development. The Potsdam Seminar brought together 71 distinguished Indians and Europeans representing the highest levels of government, and explored issues of equity, emissions trading, financing development and institutional arrangements. More details of the Potsdam meeting including a full summary are available.