After Paris pact bonhomie, gloves come off at Bonn

Developed and developing nations spar for two days over implementation of the agreement

Governments across the world paused after the Paris climate agreement in December, couching sighs of relief behind self-congratulatory notes. A deceptive bonhomie marked the pact's signing in New York in April this year.

However, less than five months after the pact was sealed, the gloves came off at Bonn, Germany, when mid-year negotiations to implement the Paris agreement began on Monday.

Arguments began even before the negotiations could. Negotiators from 196 countries could not come to a consensus on the full agenda of the inter-sessional meeting for two consecutive days. The broad divide between developed and developing countries resurfaced. Rich nations asked that work begin only on capturing what countries are going to do to reduce emissions. Others, including China and India, asked that work should also begin on capturing details of how countries are adapting to climate change and on how funds are being provided by rich countries - a demand for balance, in negotiation jargon.

The agreement is akin to a global law. The rules to the law are meant to be written between now and when the agreement comes into operation. The negotiations at Bonn, which began on Monday and will have several rounds till 2020, will put these rules in order. As is always the case with a new law, countries realised soon after the conference last year that the devil would lie in the details.

One of the central issues in the coming years will be to know how transparency would be ensured under the agreement. What would countries report back to the global community and how? The nature of international agreements ensures that countries are held accountable only for actions that they are required to report. The detail and level of reporting, therefore, becomes essential.

The G77+China group of around 100 developing countries collectively asked on Monday that the agenda reflect that discussions would be held on "Registry of nationally determined contributions (NDCs)". Developed countries opposed this saying the pact had specific clauses that ask the registry of NDCs only for country actions that reduce emissions. Developing countries highlighted other parts of the agreements and decisions that said NDCs include not just emission reduction actions or mitigation, but also adaptation and finance for the fight against climate change.

The term 'registry' refers to the way the global community would capture actions of countries. With the rift deep and wide, the meeting began on Monday by delaying the adoption of the full agenda. On Tuesday, the central negotiating body was suspended to resolve the argument. This was reflective of differences that were papered over in Paris.

Developed countries tried to keep the Paris agreement mitigation-centric and developing countries tried to have issues of adaptation and finance at the heart of the agreement. However, the French host's deft diplomatic and legal manoeuvres produced the core Paris agreement along with 139 paragraphs of parallel decisions in the last 24 hours of the negotiations. Together these set the future course, but the parallel decisions hardly got negotiated. In Bonn on Monday, some countries highlighted this.

Consequently, the Bonn meet and future talks are set to be a legal battle about reading and interpreting not just the core agreement but reading it along with the 139 paragraphs outside it, seated in the "decisions text".

It was in the context of this complexity that senior climate hands such as Shyam Saran have advised India not to jump at ratifying the agreement before the rules are set in place. The first two days at Bonn have given an inkling of how the rules may become as contentious as the agreement itself.