QUNO’s Human Impact of Climate Change (HICC) team, Lindsey and Anna, spent the past two weeks at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn, Germany, advocating for urgent, equitable, near-term available-at-scale climate policies. Negotiations were tense and Parties disagreed over key issues on climate finance and mitigation.

The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva has now published ‘A Government Official’s Toolkit: Inspiring Urgent, Healthy, Equitable, and Available at Scale Climate Action’ in four languages: Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

This toolkit aims to enhance understanding and communication of climate change and climate science, using the most recent scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report (AR6). This report was compiled over a period of just more than seven years and involved hundreds of scientists worldwide. 

The most difficult climate change Conference of Parties (COP) since the Paris Agreement (2015) has just finished. The mood in Dubai is sober and exhausted; there is little elation.  QUNO’s analysis will follow in the next days, but for now we can say that true urgency, equity and wealthy country leadership commitment remain deeply insufficient. Still, certain taboos on fossil fuels and international finance dysfunction are shifting, alongside improved focus on Adaptation and Loss and Damage.

The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva has just published an updated version ‘A Government Official’s Toolkit: Inspiring Urgent, Real, and Equitable Climate Action,’ which is available in English, Arabic, and Spanish. This publication is aimed at enhancing understanding and communication of climate change.

The Human Impacts of Climate Change representative, Lindsey Fielder Cook, and HICC programme assistant, Alana Marie Carlson, continued in the second week of COP27 to focus on urgent, fair, and transformative climate action, and financial support to loss and damage. Join us on 8 December 2022 at 15h CET for a debrief on COP27. Register here!

The first in-person climate negotiations this year – and the precursor to COP27 in Egypt - took place in Bonn from 6th June to 16th June. QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change programme was present as part of the RINGO constituency, joining the two-week meeting of Member States and representatives of civil society, Indigenous Peoples, business, and youth from around the world.

QUNO, speaking as the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), made 35 oral interventions and 11 written submissions at the 56th session of the IPCC, which can be read here.  From 21 March to 4 April, government delegations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met virtually to approve the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of the Climate Change 2022: Mitigation. The

The Human Impacts of Climate Change programme jointly made a submission to the UNFCCC’s Katowice Committee of Experts on the Impacts of the Implementation of Response Measures (KCI), working alongside colleagues from the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA).