How to Make Sense of The Bonn Climate Conference on Twitter

Posts 26 May 2016

If you’re on Twitter, your timeline may have been full of tweets about a climate change conference in Bonn, Germany. And if you’re like us, you may have been slightly confused.

The event is known as the Bonn climate change conference and ends today (26 May). It started two weeks ago on 16 May and is being organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has its headquarters in Bonn.

Officials from around the world are laying the groundwork for the COP22 climate change summit in Marrakesh, Morocco. This crucial UN summit in November is expected to answer some of the questions as to how exactly successfully implement the Paris Agreement.

Hashtag Overload?

If you follow a lot of climate change related accounts on Twitter, your timeline has probably been filled with lots of tweets from Bonn with at least three different hashtags: #SB44, #SBSTA44 and #APA1. The reason? The conference in Bonn actually combines three separate meetings:

  1. The forty-fourth session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 44)
  2. The forty-fourth session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 44)
  3. The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA 1)

The first two “sessions” are meetings of the two permanent bodies of the UNFCCC, as established in 1992 when the UN treaty was signed in Rio de Janeiro. Both help prepare the Conference of the Parties (COP) summits such as COP21 in Paris and COP22 in Marrakesh.

The Paris Agreement working group is meant to be temporary and is focused on figuring out how to successfully implement the Paris Agreement, and keep global temperature increases below one and a half – or at least two – degrees Celsius.

What it Looked Like on Twitter

So what did all this look like on Twitter? Here are a few tweets to get you started.

The UNFCC had organised a demonstration of hydrogen-powered vehicles, and UN climate chief Christiana Figueres decided to take one for a test drive around Bonn.

The first Paris Agreement working group meeting kicked off with the appointment of the group’s leadership: Sarah Baasan of Saudi Arabia and Jo Tyndall of New Zealand.

Youth representatives lobbied the officials on education. They said empowering people to take climate action through education is “worth fighting for.”

Representatives from Climate Tracker, a platform for young people tracking their countries’ roles in the global climate negotiations, were among the most visible participants.

UN envoy Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, was also in Bonn and caught up with the two new Paris Agreement working group co-chairs.

https://twitter.com/MRFCJ/status/732558428212760577

And UN climate chief Christiana Figueres welcomed her successor: Patricia Espinosa.

While climate diplomats were meeting inside, CAN International – a network of over 950 NGOs fighting climate change – organised a very special “shooting for 1.5” football event outside, and broadcasted it live on Periscope.

Want to see more? Time to delve into the #SB44, #SBSTA44 and #APA1 hashtags!

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