GENEVA—Parties to the Montreal Protocol made concrete progress on HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) in an Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG 37) meeting this week in Geneva, but the pace of negotiations remains frustratingly slow.
Parties agreed to schedule additional intersessional work to move the negotiations forward before the next OEWG in July, raising hopes that an ambitious global agreement to address these super greenhouse gases can be agreed in 2016.
At the last Montreal Protocol meeting in November 2015, the world’s governments agreed the “Dubai Pathway on HFCs,” which committed them to “work within the Montreal Protocol to an HFC amendment in 2016 by first resolving challenges by generating solutions in the contact group on the feasibility and ways of managing HFCs.”
This week saw the first formal and informal negotiations on the challenges raised, with text that provisionally agreed on exemptions for High Ambient Temperature (HAT) countries and some, but not all, of the finance related issues. However, despite working until the early hours of the morning, it was not possible to finalize text on the long list of challenges that face the Parties before the HFC amendment proposals can be negotiated.
As well as finance and exemptions, the meeting discussed at length the special situation of developing countries, Intellectual Property Rights, flexibility in implementation, non-party trade provisions, legal aspects, and the relationship with the ongoing HCFC phase-out.
The meeting agreed to schedule an additional two days of the current OEWG, prior to the 38th OEWG and an extraordinary Meeting of the Parties (MOP) which is due to take place in Vienna in July.
“The robust discussions on finance demonstrate that Parties recognize the need to incentivize developing countries to leapfrog transitional climate damaging gases,” said Avipsa Mahapatra, EIA’s Global Climate Campaign Manager. “It is critical to take fast action on HFCs to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise this century to well under 2 degrees Celsius.”