Katowice Rulebook
It is a precise and detailed agreement according to which the Paris Agreement will be implemented in a manner that would be transparent and fair for all Parties.
- The Katowice outcome is a complex package, achieved through in-depth technical discussions and political compromise and containing operational guidance on:
- The information about domestic mitigation and other climate goals and activities that governments will provide in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
- How to communicate about efforts to adapt to climate impacts
- The rules for functioning of the Transparency Framework, which will show to the world what countries are doing about climate change
- Establishment of a committee to facilitate implementation of the Paris Agreement and promote compliance with the obligations undertaken under the Agreement
- How to conduct the Global Stocktake of overall progress towards the aims of the Paris Agreement;
- How to assess progress on the development and transfer of technology
- How to provide advance information on financial support to developing countries and the process for establishing new targets on finance from 2025 onwards
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However the rulebook agreed at Katowice dilutes the Paris agreement.
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At Paris, the developed nations were allowed to make voluntary commitments to climate mitigation, on par with the developing nations. At Katowice this process went further, with uniform standards of reporting, monitoring and evaluation for all countries. The real targets of this uniformity are not the poorest nations, who have been provided exemptions, but the larger developing nations. These reporting requirements, in their uniformity, are intended as much for Maldives as the U.S.
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At Katowice, certain flexibility was given to developing countries—which have lower capacity to collect and analyze information— to provide less rigorous information about their progress on NDCs. But developing countries will have to provide “selfdetermined” time frames to improve the quality and quantity of reporting.
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At Katowice, rules on finance were significantly diluted. Firstly, developed countries have the choice to include all kinds of financial instruments— concessional and non-concessional loans, grants and aids from various public and private sources—to meet their commitments. Also developed countries now have the freedom to “selfdetermine” the kind of financial resources they want to give and do this without any strong mechanism of accountability.
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Global Stock Take (GST) was supposed to measure global progress, identify barriers and give recommendations. However, this process will neither give any recommendations to individual countries or a group of countries, nor will it give any prescriptive policy as per the rulebook.
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In Katowice, there was virtually no progress made on non-market mechanisms, while all big countries, developed and developing, seemed to have great interest in trading carbon credits.
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The special report on the impacts of 1.5C global warming, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October, became a major source of tension at the talks. Four countries – US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait refused to welcome the report.