LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)– Malawi’s umbrella platform for coordinating civil society voice and response to impacts of climate change, Civil Society Network on Climate Change (CISONECC), says Malawi is geared to push for the implementation of the Paris agreement in the forth-coming 23rd Session of the Conference of Parties (COPs 23).

The COPs 23, which is slated for November 6-17, 2017, in Bonn, Germany, will be part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and also serving as the thirteenth meeting of the parties under the Kyoto Protocol (CMP.13).

This comes after two years when COPs 21 in Paris, France adopted the historic pact to combat climate change, that brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

The Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping an eye on the global temperature rise this Century well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Paris Agreement has 197 signatories. Of the 197 signatories, 153 States have deposited their Instrument of Ratification.

The Paris Agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016 after the threshold of at least 55 countries, accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions was reached.

This was unprecedented as it occurred 4 years before the planned year of 2020. Malawi deposited its Instrument of Ratification for the Paris Agreement on June, 29 2017.

But since 2015 nothing tangible has been implemented, especially by industrialized nations that contribute the greatest gas emissions that cause global warming, and resulting into climate change.

In the consultative conference held in Lilongwe this past week, which aimed at soliciting views from various stakeholders ahead of the COPs 23, Julius Ng’oma CISONECC’s National Coordinator, said it was time for signatories to the Paris Agreement to implement their commitments.

Ng’oma said that the Bonn Conference will be a platform for the push for serious implementation of the Agreement, coupled with legal binding to trace the progress.

He added that developing countries should be allowed space to determine their adaptation needs, and priorities based on their national development policies, plans, and strategies.

Support for adaptation should be balanced with that of mitigation as it is the priority for developing countries. Adaptation actions should be fully supported by grants from public finance, and that the support should be accessible, predictable, and adequate.

“Developing countries should receive adequate grant-based support for adaptation. For all these to happen, there should be legal binding framework that will take to task developed nation when they fail to implement agreements,” Ng’oma said.

Evans Njerwa, Malawi’s COPs negotiator under the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining, in the Environmental Affairs Department (EAD), said Malawi’s stand was intact to push for serious implementation of the Paris Agreement, which remains the integral part of all conferences the nation has been attending for years.

Njerwa said the conference expects to outline modalities, procedures, and guidelines to bring the Paris Agreement into full implementation.