Polish Briefing: UN climate summit in Bonn launched

The UN Climate Summit in Bonn aims at progress in developing the rules of implementation for the Paris Agreement, which are supposed to be adopted during the COP24.

“For this moment, the top priority is to conclude the works on the implementation package for the Paris Agreement, adoption of which is scheduled for the UN Climate Summit taking place in December 2018 in Katowice” – notes Minister of Environment, Professor Jan Szyszko.

“The Polish government, as the subsequent presidency in the process of climate negotiations, will make all efforts to support the government of Fiji in working-out possibly the most effective arrangements during COP23 underlying further works during the summit in Poland” – adds Vice-Minister of Environment, Paweł Sałek, Government Plenipotentiary for Climate Policy.

Talking the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is the first in the history international agreement obliging all countries in the world to take actions for climate protection.

“The Agreement calls the parties to reduce the rate of carbon concentration in atmosphere, however the actions reducing the CO2 emission are to be taken with consideration to the specifics and socio-economic capacity of each country” – says Vice-Minister Sałek.

The Paris Agreement was adopted during the COP21 in December 2015 in Paris. On behalf of the government of Poland, the content of the new climate agreement has been negotiated by the delegation headed by Professor Jan Szyszko, Minister of Environment.

According to Vice-Minister Paweł Sałek, the Paris Agreement brings the issue of climate neutrality rather than decarbonisation.

“The activities towards the reduction of CO2 emission will be taken among others by introducing the new technologies and increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the energy balance. The emission will be balanced by means of increasing sequestration by the ecosystems and maintaining sustainable forest and soil management” – he explains.

Polish concept for tackling climate warming

The Polish proposal related to implementation of the Paris Agreement is to reduce carbon concentration by its sequestration by forests and soils. This activity will be executed by among others the Forest Carbon Farms project. It assumes that planting specific tree species or replanting the new ones in already existing forests will result in greater capacity to sequester carbon dioxide.