SBI Coordinator Katia Simeonova, SBI Chair Amena Yauvoli, Fiji, and SBI Focal Point Laurence Pollier in Bonn
The PIDF Interim Secretary General, Mr Amena Yauvoli, is currently chairing an important international climate change meeting in Bonn Germany.
Mr Yauvoli is the only Pacific Islander and the representative of SIDS chairing one of the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). This appointment was made at COP19 in Warsaw in 2013 (following our successful G77 &China Chairmanship) and renewed at COP 20 in Lima, Peru in December last year and will cease in Paris at the end of UN Climate Change Conference in December this year.
The UNFCC Subsidiary Bodies are the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), and the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP).
The SBSTA supports the work of the COP and the CMP through the provision of timely information and advice on scientific and technological matters as they relate to the Convention or its Kyoto Protocol. The SBI supports the work of the COP and the CMP through the assessment and review of the effective implementation of the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol. The ADP mandate is to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties, which is to be completed no later than 2015 in order for it to be adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris in December this year and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.
There are two sessions of the UNFCCC taking place in one year (in June and December) to deliberate on the on-going work programme of the Conference of Parties (COP) and its subsidiary bodies. For the June session this year, the forty-second sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 42) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 42) are meeting now in Bonn, Germany until 11 June 2015. In addition, the negotiations to achieve a New Climate Change Agreement in 2015 through the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP2-9) is also taking place during the two weeks.
Prior to the opening plenary of the session on Monday morning, a meeting with the Incoming Presidency, Minister Laurent Fabius of France, was convened to apprise him of the planned work of the subsidiary bodies and the ADP. It was emphatically stressed that this session is the last stop before Paris and parties have to work hard using available time and resources to advance the work in here so that Paris becomes a success.
There are a number of Pacific Island delegations as parties attending the June session here in Bonn.