Homework for Bonn III: 
New LCA Text

11 June 2010

Just before ECO was going to bed, a fresh revision of LCA text landed. ECO congratulates the Chair for moving swiftly forward in facilitating the negotiations. Now delegates have something to take back home to their ministers, to prove that they weren’t just playing football with the Secretariat and the NGOs, and that they indeed have managed to recover from the Copenhagen hangover and started to negotiate.

The text includes hobby horses from all corners, but not every single idea from everyone, which is an indication that the Chair is doing her job. Now the ball is on the ministers’ side again. They must start filling the blank holes in the document and making choices, so that Parties can return to the Maritim in August well prepared and ready to hit the ground running – that is to say, start negotiating substance from day one. With only two negotiating weeks left before Cancun, the August session must take appropriate time for negotiating the crunch issues such as the legal form of the agreed outcome, which is an issue that cannot be left for the last hours of Cancún. Another crunch issue with high priority is the gigatonne gap between the current pledges and the 2 C and 1.5 C benchmarks. By August we expect countries to come forward with clear proposals on how to tackle this issue, which is of joint responsibility.

The core message for developed country ministers, after the lengthy elaboration of their pledges and related loopholes in the KP groups this session, is that they simply must score higher. ECO has looked at your potentials and knows that most of you have not even tried serious targets yet.

Finally, Parties should continue supporting the Chair in her challenging task of facilitating the negotiations. The fresh text, which compiles the views of the Parties, deserves to be reviewed with fresh eyes, after some refreshing football. Any attempts to derail the process with bad faith and delay tactics will earn a red card.