Eighth meeting of the Second Session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP 2-8)

Opening statement by Angola on behalf of the Least Developed Countries Group

Geneva, Switzerland

Co-Chairs, colleagues,

Angola has the honour to speak on behalf of the Least Developed Countries Group. At the outset allow me join others in congratulating you both on the appointment as the ADP Co-Chairs. LDCs stand ready to offer you our full cooperation this year, which is one of the most crucial in the history of the international climate change negotiation process.

I would like to associate my group with the statement made by South Africa on behalf of the G77 and China, by Sudan on behalf of African Group of Negotiation (AGN), and by the Maldives on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

Co-Chairs, we are at a critical juncture of our work towards reaching an agreement on a legal text for adoption in Paris. We only have six days to progress from the elements for a draft negotiation text we elaborated in Lima as Annex to Decision 1/CP.20 to a legal and formal negotiating text to be communicated to all Parties in all the United Nations official languages by the end of May. We all understand how important it is to respect this legal requirement and we should endeavor to do so, even if the Lima COP set significant challenges for us. We LDCs are ready to rise to this challenge.

I would like to highlight a few key issues that should guide us in our deliberations for the next 6 days.

• First we believe that we should be working towards a protocol with legal force to be made available to our leaders for signature at the Paris COP.
• Second, the new legal agreement should be firmly linked to the most recent science. We must be ambitious and brave in our efforts to ensure an increase in mean global temperatures of no more than 1.5 degree Celsius and fulfill the objective of the UNFCCC. Our collective efforts must recognize that the livelihood of people in the most vulnerable countries depends on an ambitious outcome, one at the scale of the challenge that we are currently facing. Worse is even to be expected, if we do not act with the greatest urgent. We cannot rely on simple pledges. We need strong commitments.
• Third, we believe that the legal text we develop should give balance to all the major elements arising from the Durban mandate and beyond, and ensure that actions in each of these take into account gender dimensions. A balanced text as the main outcome within a package covering all elements is critical for LDCs. We firmly believe that means of implementation and adaptation are core elements of the Protocol.
• Fourth, to ensure that all Parties take significant steps to reduce their emissions, we must ensure that there is new, additional and substantial finance to underwrite this effort. The new protocol should establish durable measures to ensure permanent arrangements for scaling up finance.
• Fifth, as our countries are already suffering from the severe and irreversible impacts of climate change, an effective response to adaptation is essential. The new legal agreement should properly recognize the importance of providing support for adaptation and to establish new and more effective institutional arrangements to support this effort.
• Sixth, as we stated in Lima, loss and damage must be a core element of the legal agreement. Loss and damage must be properly recognized as a stand-alone element separate from adaptation. This is simply due to the fact that loss and damage is a different concept from adaptation. As such co-chairs let us reiterate our strong conviction that the new agreement should properly address loss and damage as a discreet process. Here also, we must firmly establish a permanent and appropriate arrangement to effectively address loss and damage. We must be forward thinking in our approach to this critically important issue.

Linked to all these previous elements, mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage and finance are essential for the development and subsequent transfer of technologies that support transformational change. We must build a facilitative approach for transformational technologies to meet the climate change challenge. All of these efforts will require capacity building. We must enshrine effective means to build the capacity of the most disadvantaged countries.

Co-Chairs, on procedural matters related to this session, we have indicated to you in our meeting last week that we were uncomfortable with the extended time you have set for our meetings. The LDCs have always suffered the most from meetings extending over time to the extent to be forced to eat during our coordination time. If we are to agree to an extension of time beyond 6pm, we seek your absolute assurance that the morning sessions will stop immediately at 1pm and not extend into our coordination time. LDCs are one of the largest coordination groups and we need the time to discuss the issues at hand.

Finally, Co-Chairs, we seek your assurance that with any spin-off groups that you form, LDCs are properly represented in such meetings.

I thank you.