The Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries groups  represent 83 countries and over 920 million people that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. As the latest session of UN climate change negotiations ends today, the two groups together call on negotiators to come back in June ready to move expeditiously from talking about solutions to implementing them.

The groups jointly released the following statement:

“The conversations over the past few days have underscored important facts we have known for many years now: low-carbon energy options are not only widely available and affordable, they are essential to our survival.

“Science has confirmed that unless we act immediately, the opportunity to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree threshold could be irrevocably lost.

“If we fail to act now, a vastly more expensive response will be required later, which will have profound implications for the scale and nature of obligations under the 2015 agreement. The costs of adapting to the impacts of climate change are already spiraling out of control, and thus need to be a bigger part of the ADP discussions.

“For us, more delay will mean more floods, more famines, more storms, and inevitably, more deaths.

“To that end, it is essential we have another ADP* session in September as well as a Ministerial level meeting at COP19** in Warsaw that is geared to raising mitigation ambition. These meetings will be essential to get the necessary political commitments for lowering emissions.

“Finally, the ADP process must culminate with a Protocol under the Convention applicable to all Parties and adopted no later than 2015. We call on our colleagues to reflect on how their delegation can contribute to achieving this objective over the next few weeks and come back to Bonn in June ready to get to work.”

*ADP refers to the the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action — a body under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in which parties to the convention negotiate.

** COP19 is the 19th conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It will take place in November 2013.

LDC group spokesperson in Bonn: Sandra Freitas
ldc.unfccc.communication@gmail.com