On 21 and 22 September 2017, 27 climate negotiators from across the globe (14 from developing countries and the rest from the developed world) met at La Redoute in Bonn Bad Godesberg to discuss the negotiations on 'matters relating to agriculture' under the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).

Following the model of the ecbi Oxford Fellowships, the Seminar was preceded by a couple of preparatory sessions for developing country participants, essentially focusing on advantages and disadvantages of continuing the consideration of issues relating to agriculture under the SBSTA.

These deliberations suggested that what might be useful is a mapping of UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement bodies with respect to their functions and remits, the information flows and governance relationships between them, and the activities related to architecture undertaken by and under them, and to publish the outcome by 31 March 2018, for discussion at SBSTA 48 (May 2018), in order to provide input for further work on issues related to agriculture under SBSTA.

This institutional mapping idea was received warmly in the Seminar itself, where another idea also came to fruition, namely to hold in-depth technical expert meetings on topics identified at its 40th session in June 2014 (see SBSTA 40 Report, §§ 83-9), namely:
(a) developing early warning systems in relation to extreme weather events;
(b) assessing risk and vulnerability of agricultural systems to different climate change scenarios;
(c) identifying agriculture adaptation measures; and
(d) identifying and assessing agricultural practices and technologies to enhance productivity sustainably.

The aim of these technical expert meetings is to finalize the SBSTA deliberations of these topics in accordance with the SBSTA mandate as laid down in Article 9.2 of the UNFCCC.