4 - Mission: Adoption with Ovations: The Contribution of the UNFCCC Secretariat to the Achievement of the Paris Agreement

Summary

Richard Kinley provides an account from the vantage point of the UNFCCC Secretariat, where he served as Deputy Executive Secretary from 2006 to 2017. First, he describes the role of the “Climate Change Secretariat” in supporting the intergovernmental process with coordination, communication, and information sharing. Second, Kinley recounts the Secretariat’s work in preparing COP 21, emphasizing how an effective and collegial collaboration between the Secretariat and the French Presidency in the years leading up to Paris helped set the stage for a successful conference. Kinley also discusses how to maintain a “party-driven process”, the role of the Secretariat in managing the negotiating text, and how to handle the challenges of meeting schedules and logistics. Third, he analyzes how the Secretariat managed the intergovernmental process during the Paris Conference in 2015, combining a discussion of procedural solutions and tools, such as the “Comité de Paris”, with a detailed and dramatic account of how member states managed to go from a situation where “everything was on the table”, to identify a compromise solution that could be adopted by the plenary.