Peering over the Ledge and Stepping Back (Again): The Bonn Climate Change Conference May 2012

While the COP 17 outcomes did provide some clarity as to what Parties were striving to develop in response to climate change.

It was (as it always is) left to the Bonn spring negotiating session to determine the more procedural how.Keeping in mind that the Parties are already in the fifth year of negotiating the two-year mandate of the Bali Action Plan (BAP), initializing the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) with a goal of reaching a resolution by 2015 is no small task. In Bonn, Parties took the first steps toward initializing the ADP and continued to strive for resolution on the BAP with a year-end deadline to do so.This brief covers some of the key outcomes and implications going forward. As frequently seems to be the case, negotiators became embroiled in political posturing and procedural arguments, threatening to negate the progress made in Durban. As in the past, however, after pushing the system to the brink, they pulled back and came to a solution, allowing the ADP and the rest of the UNFCCC process to move forward.