About ACE
Video Summary of ACE
Presented by Timothy Damon, Global Youth Development Institue (GYDI)
World governments (known as “Parties” under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) adopted Article 6 at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. Article 6 calls on Parties to educate, engage, and empower all members of society to engage in climate action.
Article 12 of the Paris Agreement expands upon Article 6 of the Convention by outlining six elements to achieve empowerment and engagement goals: education, training, public access to information, public awareness, public participation and international cooperation on climate action. Collectively, these six elements are referred to as “Action for Climate Empowerment” - or “ACE” for short.
What is ACE?
01
Climate
Education
02
Training
03
Public
Awareness
04
Public
Participation
05
Public access to
Information
06
International
Collaboration
Key Terms
Parties
Countries who have ratified the UNFCCC.
Doha Work Programme (DWP)
Adopted at COP18
in 2012 to guide ACE implementation until 2020.
Non-Party Stakeholders (NPS)
Climate actors other
than governments, e.g., NGOs, universities, business.
Article 6
Established the 6 elements of ACE in 1992.
Conference of Parties (COP)
Formal annual meeting of
Parties where they negotiate and adopt Decisions.
Article 12
Reinforced ACE under the Paris Agreement.
Subsidiary Bodies (SB)
Refers to the technical meeting
held between COPs to advance the work by Parties.
Paris Agreement Work Programme
Provided further details for each Article, including Article 12.
Timeline
The Doha Work Programme
At the 18th Conference of the Parties in Doha, Qatar, in 2012 (COP18), the Convention’s Parties adopted an 8 year work programme to guide ACE efforts. This work programme is called the Doha Work Programme (DWP). In this program, guidelines for establishing National Focal Points (NFPs) on ACE and hosting annual regional dialogues on ACE were implemented. Since the launch of the DWP, more than 100 countries have appointed ACE NFPs and eight annual ACE Dialogue events have been held. The DWP expired in 2020, and a new WP must hence be developed.
The ACE Youth Forum
The DWP ended in 2020, meaning a new Work Programme (WP) will need to be adopted. To help shape the new WP, the ACE WG of YOUNGO are launching the second 2nd Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) Youth Forum (YF). The goal of the ACE YF is to bring youth delegates together to inform the creation of the next ACE Work Programme and provide the space for sharing ACE best practices, challenges, and partnership opportunities. Some of the missing elements from the DWP we hope to discuss, address, and incorporate into our proposed new WP are the lack of a funding mechanism for ACE, the need to monitor and evaluate ACE activities, and ways to engage sub-national and non-governmental organizations in implementing ACE.
The ACE YF will be a virtual event that runs over the course of two weekends. In recognition of the importance of capacity-building for climate action (which is a significant pillar of ACE), the first weekend will offer a capacity-building session for youth to learn about ACE so they can engage on weekend 2. The second weekend will consist of two possible tracks: one track will focus on sharing best practices, barriers, and opportunities and the other track will center on designing a proposed new WP on ACE. At the conclusion of the event, we plan to share our proposed new WP with Party stakeholders to inform the negotiations on ACE and shine a spotlight on what upcoming generations need in order to be engaged on climate action.