While progress at these conferences is always difficult
to assess, based on the evidence of the first week, the parties
appear to have so far avoided potential land mines and gotten on
with the work needed to implement the Paris Agreement.
After the first week of negotiations at COP23, the parties to
the Paris Agreement have gotten down to the hard task of writing
the rule book for the Paris Agreement.
The task facing COP23 is a significant one. Two years after the
signing of the Paris Agreement there has not been much progress on
one of the key tasks due to be completed by next year: drafting the
rule book for the Paris Agreement which is to come into effect in
2020. Concerns had been expressed leading into the conference in
Bonn regarding the lack of progress, with only broad outlines of
what the contents of the rule book might be, but with disagreements
expressed even over that.
