COP21 UN Climate Change Conference 2015

Paris, 30 November - 11 December 2015

A new hope?

The Paris Agreement sets us on a new path - hopefully one that is not only more sustainable, but one that is fair, just and equitable. This agreement must send a clear message to investors, businesses and citizens that the fossil fuel age is over. We must ensure the transition to renewable energy is made as quickly as possible and ensure this is done in a way that doesn’t limit the development aspirations of those less fortunate than ourselves.

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The challenge of a 2°C world

We are already experiencing a 0.8°C rise and the poorest bear the brunt. This is going to get a lot worse as we get closer to 2°C.

Practical Action recognises that tackling climate change is indivisible from tackling poverty. The people that we work with tell us how climate change is blighting their lives. Its impact on ecosystems and livelihoods will affect our work across all our programme areas.

Through our work we are addressing these impacts with communities through developing climate smart agriculture, installing renewable energy systems and building disaster resilience.

Putting Technology Justice at the heart of the climate agreement will ensure poor people are not left behind.

Contact details for our staff at COP21

Aaron Leopold, Global Energy Advocate
Colin McQuistan, Senior Policy Advisor, disaster risk reduction and climate change
Chris Henderson, Senior Policy Advisor, agriculture and food security

Blogs on other sites

UNFCCC

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC) is an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The Convention sets an ultimate objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system."

The supreme body of the convention is the Conference of Parties (COP). The COP held its first session in 1995 and since then every year the members of the UNFCCC from around the world meet to discuss science, progress and actions at the COP. This year the COP will be held in Paris from 30 November to 11 December 2015.

The Kyoto agreement expires this year, so new terms must be agreed in Paris if we are to have any chance of preventing devastating global warming. We already have a 0.8°C rise and the poorest bear the brunt. As we get closer to 2°C it will get much worse.

Overview
Key COP Publications
Climate Change Blogs
Images

Full list of events

Date	Event	Venue	Time
Monday 30 November 2015	9th Focal Point Forum of the Nairobi work programme, in conjunction with SBSTA 43 meeting to focus on identifying good practices to linking national and local adaptation planning processes Practical Action representatives: Colin McQuistan & Chris Henderson	tba	18:00 - 20:30
Tuesday 1 December 2015	CTCN introductory meeting, for Consortium Partners and Network Members, to define CTCN common messages during the COP Practical Action representative: Colin McQuistan	UNEP Room 9, Hall 3	10:30 - 11:30
Tuesday 1 December 2015	Climate resilience activities at sub-national level in South Asian countries Mr. Ranga Pallawala, Janathakshan	Observer Room 08	15:00 - 16:30
Wednesday 2 December 2015	Latin American Ecosystem Based Adaptation community of practice, Wednesday 2nd December, A session outlining a peer-learning network of climate change officials for enhanced implementation, organised by UNEP Practical Action Representative: Chris Henderson	OECD Pavilion	13:15 - 14:45
Sunday 6 December 2015	Lighting Talks at Development & Climate Days - presentation of a practical tool for measuring resilience to flood risk Practical Action representative: Colin McQuistan	L'Usine	09:30 - 11:00
Monday 7 December 2015	The Effective Deployment of Mitigation Finance: Lessons from the CTF Practical Action representative: Aaron Leopold	Africa Pavilion, Blue Zone, Hall 3, Room 2	10:00 - 11:30
Monday 7 December 2015	Climate Change and Development in Africa - An Entrepreneurial Approach to Innovative Solutions Practical Action representative: Aaron Leopold	Africa Pavilion, Salle 1	18:00 - 19:30
Wednesday 9 December 2015	The Electricity Model Base for Africa, UNECA/KTH Institute of Technology Practical Action representative: Aaron Leopold		18:00 - 19:30
Friday 11 December 2015	Climate Generations - efficiency and sustainability of climate and environmental policies in Africa: What are the scientific, political and financial barriers? Practical Action representative: Colin McQuistan	Africa Pavilion	11:45 - 14:15

Climate Change affects every area of our work including: agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, and urban services. In the following publications we draw on nearly 50 years of experience of working directly with poor communities around the world and we advocate strategies for tackling the manifold issues associated with climate change.

Why Technology Justice is Critical for the Climate Negotiations

Paper for COP21 on delivering for climate change affected communities the finance, technology and capacity to give them a viable future.

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Making climate change mitigation more meaningful: the link to universal energy access

The second paper in our poor people's energy briefing series argues that unless the global energy access agenda is more robustly paired with the climate agenda, the energy poor will remain what they have always been: left behind. It provides justification for the pairing of the two agendas on a number of fronts, and provides a series of recommendations on how decision-makers and institutions can quickly and effectively begin to address both issues simultaneously.