The 23rd Conference of the Countries part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 23) started in the former German capital Bonn. Participants will discuss the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and in particular the creation of a single mechanism for assessing the efforts of individual countries to combat global warming as well as the consequences of the US decision to withdraw from the reached agreements, reports mediapool. 

According to German observers, it is not yet clear whether a final document on the forum could be agreed. At the opening of the conference, there were emotional calls - particularly on the part of the Fiji presidency - for more determined action against adverse climate change. "Our common request to the world is to keep the course set in Paris with the 2015 agreement against global warming", Fiji Prime Minister and chairman of the COP 23 Frank Bainimarama said at the ceremony.

At the end of the Bonn forum, politicians such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and the Governor of California Jerry Brown will join. The conference will also feature actors Arnold Schwarzenegger who criticise the policy of president Donald Trump on Climate Affairs, Leonardo DiCaprio and former US Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. The forum will last until November 17th. About 25 000 people are involved in the negotiations. Among the participants there are diplomats from 195 countries, as well as scientists, lobbyists and environmentalists. The United States, which announced it was withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, will be represented by Deputy State Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon. Prior to the meeting, conservation organizations held protests in Bonn and near a coal mine nearby to point out that Germany continues to use highly polluting fossil fuels. The Paris agreement of 2015 set the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or at most 2 degrees by the end of the century. However, diplomats did not agree exactly how their countries will achieve this ambitious goal. The negotiations in Bonn will specify the rules to which the countries have to adhere.

This includes the development of international carbon measurement standards so that one country's efforts can be compared to those of another. Another topic for debating is how countries should review what they have achieved and set new, more ambitious carbon reduction targets beyond 2020. The third big issue is about money, the DPA notes. Experts agree that shifting economies from fossil fuels and preparing for the inevitable consequences of climate change will require huge financial resources, including the US government of Donald Trump, who is skeptical about climate change. Germany likes to be a leader in the fight against global warming, and Merkel's reputation as a "climate chancellor" is partly based on the leading role she played in the past negotiations. Environmentalists, however, note that about 40 percent of Germany's electricity still comes from coal-fired power plants - one of the most carbon-intensive sources of energy. And the German motorways are also literally unique in their nature in that they do not have a general speed limit, despite the fact that car emissions rise significantly at higher speeds.

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