YK Poudel

Following the 28th Conference of Parties (COP), Bhutan hosted the UAE-Belém national workshop last week to follow up on the indicators and its development.

Chaired by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), Hendrik Hubert Joseph Vreuls, over 60 technical experts representing Parties and UN organisations attended the workshop.

Last year at COP28 in Dubai, the Framework for Global Climate Resilience launched seven thematic and four-dimensional targets. In order to measure progress towards these targets, a two-year UAE–Belém work programme on indicators was also launched.

At the national level, integrating these indicators will be critical to driving national efforts on adaptation and resilience and to strengthening and tracking support for adaptation action.

The opening session on May 15 was attended by the secretary of Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Karma Tshering, the Technical Head of the Bhutanese delegation during COP28 and the UN Resident Coordinator in Bhutan, Karla Robin Hershey.

Karma Tshering called on for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) to be pragmatic and nationally driven, and take into account a bottoms-up approach to developing the indicators—solving the issue of burdensome reporting requirements.

“While a global overview is important for adaptation there is need to be mindful that adaptation happens within the local context and is important to recognise this. We will be taking a simplified view to tracking progress and channelling finance to issues that are easily quantifiable or immediately apparent,” the secretary said.

The Parties deliberated on a range of topic areas in relation to indicators submitted for the targets, how to guide the design of the indicators process, and how to achieve ambitious outcomes.

 Similarly, a series of other in-person presentations and virtual presentations were made on disaster risk reduction and the need for global collaboration on data availability and sharing among others.

The sessions discussed the existing indicator processes and the lessons, discussion on way ahead and need for the Parties—Bhutan presented on Gross National Happiness and the business assessment.

Additionally, the discussion centred around the GGA, which is a global commitment under Article 7.1 of the Paris Agreement, with the aim of “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change.”

According to the UNFCCC document, the GGA aims to serve as a unifying framework that can drive political action and finance for adaptation, on the same scale as mitigation. This requires setting specific, measurable targets and guidelines for global adaptation action, including enhancing adaptation finance and support for developing countries.

Article 7

To enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change, Article 7, of the Paris Agreement was established in 2015.

The view was to contribute to sustainable development ensuring an adequate adaptation response to meet the goal of keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Earlier, during the meeting of the Parties, also referred to as CMA—the Parties initiated the development of a framework for the global goal on adaptation to guide its achievement and the review of overall progress in achieving it was done in CMA 4 till 2023.