COP23 taking place from November 6 -17, 2017 in Bonn was branded as a “techncial COP dilluting expectations on a Paris style breakthrough and mainly focussing on climate finance. Under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, developed countries pledged to “provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation”, and to quantify every two years their paid contributions as well as level of financial support they will provide in the future. “The ambition of developing countries depends on the means of implementation provided by developed countries. COP23 has fallen short of the momentum and pathway for the implementation of the Paris Agreement”, said the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance. Developed countries had pledged to raise US$100 billion each year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020. However, as of September 2017, governments had pledged USD 10.3 billion only.

Germany pledged €50 million each to the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund), Sweden €186 million each to the Adaptation Fund and the LDCF) and Belgium €10.25 million to the LDCF fund) The COP23 conclusions decided to move the topic to the intersessional meetings up to the COP24 in Katowice Poland The Adaptation Fund also received more than $90m (including $50m from Germany) and the same amount was also pledged to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF).

Countries will need to review their emission cuts upwards through the “Talanoa dialogue” from 2018, one of the mechanism included in the Paris Agreement that allow parties to up their ambitions before 2020, when the agreement will enter into force.

COP23 did include discussions on loss and damage as part of the Warsaw International Mechanism (or “WIM”), agreed in 2013 at COP19 in Poland, this is a separate UNFCCC workstream to the Paris Agreement, with its own executive committee. The WIM agreed on a new “five-year rolling workplan” for the mechanism, finalising a proposal from October. The WIM has yet to bring forward any concrete plan on finance.

The EHA has started the collaboration with Brazilian colleagues on its first UNFCC CTCN Technical Assistance project to establish the right expertise to leverage Brazilian vast renewabel resources to produce clean hydrogen in view of the WHEC 2018 in Rio de Janeiro.