Experts to discuss best practices on circular economies, emission reductions

In an effort to step up immediate climate action, experts from around the world will meet on 1 and 2 May in Bonn to discuss the policy options, technological innovations, and best practices on circular economies to achieve emission reductions and generate sustainable development benefits.
The gathering will take place as part of the so-called Technical Expert Meetings on Mitigation during the 2018 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, which aim to identify activities that have a high potential for emission reductions in order to boost climate action before 2020.
Importantly, the expert meeting will align its discussion with the format of the year-long Talanoa Dialogue, an important international conversation around ambition now and in the future.
Specifically, the dialogue will check progress, reaffirm the goals of the Paris Agreement and aim to find solutions how countries can increase their ambition now and in the next round of their national climate action plans, officially termed ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’.
As per tradition in the Pacific region, a ‘talanoa’ invites participants to find solutions for the common good through story-telling. The Talanoa Dialogue will invite participants to share climate ambition-related stories around three questions: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?
The Technical Expert Meeting will also structure its discussions around these questions to ensure that expert voices can easily be fed into the Talanoa Dialogue. This will be important for the dialogue’s political phase at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP24) at the end of the year in Poland, where high-level officials from around the world will take forward all input received during the year.
Led and organized by the UNFCCC secretariat, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, participants will discuss currently available policies and technological solutions as well as innovative approaches on waste-to-energy and supply chain re-design solutions. These are regarded as integral elements to achieving a circular economy with key economic, environmental and employment benefits.
The circular economy is becoming an established way of creating value, and ultimately prosperity. It works by extending a product’s lifespan through improved design and servicing, and relocating waste from the end of the supply chain to the beginning – in effect, using resources more efficiently by using them over and over, not only once.
A number of experts representing the public and private sector as well as the civil society from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Pacific, will share their hands-on experiences. Their experiences will help to identify ways forward, as well as necessary actions to be taken by Parties, non-Party stakeholders such as cities or businesses and organizations to replicate and upscale innovative approaches. These discussions will also help identify best practices on waste to energy and supply chain re-design.
The expert meeting is part of the technical examination process on mitigation (TEP-M), that was initiated in 2014 with the aim of exploring high-potential mitigation policies, practices and technologies with significant sustainable development co-benefits that could increase the mitigation ambition of pre-2020 climate action. The meeting will have provisions for virtual participation.