Ninth part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP 2-9)

Statement by the republic of Angola on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

11 June 2015, Bonn, Germany

Mr. Co-chairs,

The Group of the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) would like to thank you for your suggestions on the way forward. We welcome the progress, albeit modest, achieved during this session in Bonn.

We believe that Parties demonstrated a true spirit of cooperation, diligence and hard work. We believe maintaining such an attitude is critical as we continue on the road leading us to Paris.

The approach to work tested here helped to strengthen confidence among the Parties; however, we must recognize that it did not allow us to progress sufficiently in developing a more structured and comprehensive text for a future legally binding agreement in Paris. After two weeks of discussions, the text is still in a form that is impossible to engage and prepare our Ministers with 6 months, or rather 10 negotiation days, before Paris.

Co-chairs,

It is critical that Parties have a text to present to our Ministers as soon as possible. It is unfortunate that the LDC Group has now had to reschedule a ministerial meeting proposed to be held at the end of this month in the margin of the President of General Assembly of the United Nations climate event.

For this reason, the LDC Group believes that the co-chairs must double efforts to support Parties in fulfilling their mandate and to progress as needed to secure a balanced, legally binding agreement in Paris. We fully support the suggestions you have outlined on the way forward.

Co-chairs,

Under the mandate given to you by Parties, we will be grateful if you prepared and made available to us, as early as possible (earlier than24 July 2015), the documents outlined in your suggestions.

These documents must be built on the work done in Bonn. The streamlining and clustering agreed here in Bonn should be used as inputs.

Bearing in mind that these documents have no status and that the negotiation text out of the Geneva session remains before Parties as the unique basis of negotiation, we would like to provide some indications on elements that our group view as important, and that need to be taken into account, when fulfilling your mandate:

1. All aspects of the Geneva negotiating text must be considered worthy of being in the legally binding agreement and not simply in a COP decision;
2. Parties reserve their right to move back text that the co-chairs deem to be COP decision text, if they believe that this text is better placed in the legal legally binding agreement;
3. We believe that a comprehensive treatment of the General/Objectives section is important. It may also be needed that simple objectives be included in each section to provide direction to these sections ;
4. While there is overlap between the Transparency section and the other sections of the Geneva text, we do not believe the Transparency section should be moved to other sections. It should be a stand-alone element;
5. We believe that anchoring existing institutions in the legally binding agreement is important. References to these institutions, including the LDCF and the LEG should remain in the legally binding agreement;
6. The primary criteria for determining what should be in the decision text is what are the issues that are operational matters and those that need to be determined or require further work before the agreement enters into force;
7. The LDC Group believes that the Paris package includes a legally binding agreement, and a set of COP decisions, including a single COP decision that incorporates new finance pledges;
8. Any amendment to the wording of the text should be on the basis that these changes make the text consistent with language that would be found in a legally binding agreement.

Co-chairs,

On workstream-II, the Group looks forward to a revised version of facilitators’ inputs reflecting the written submissions and the views and ideas put forward by Parties during very rich facilitated discussions.

The LDC Group is concerned about a compilation text that will lead to a proliferation of submissions by individual Parties, which we believe will only bring us back to the starting point.

We believe that there is growing convergence on the way forward.

Co-chairs,

Once again, we would like to express that you have the full support of our Group, as well as compliment all Parties for their engagement during this session. We stand ready for continued engagement in the remaining negotiation days ahead of us over the next months.

Thank you.