CAN Intervention in the SB38/ADP2-2 Bonn Intersessional: Incoming COP Presidency, 6 June, 2013
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak.
My name is Wael Hmaidan, the director of Climate Action Network International.
Poland will assume the COP presidency in the year that the planet passes 400 ppm of CO2 concentrations, and two years before the world must reach a new global agreement that ensures a safe planet [where we can live long and prosper and the next generations can have peace and long life].
From Warsaw we need a decision on a robust process whereby parties put forward their emissions reduction targets in mid-2014. These national target setting processes will require clear guidance on the nature and scope of the expected targets, and be informed by equity and science-based criteria.
These will help ensure that national and aggregate targets are quantified, transparent, comparable and adequate, and put us on a path to staying well below 2 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels.
After targets are put forward, the next stage must be a rigorous review process driven by both science and equity considerations, aimed at generating the level of global mitigation ambition required by science.
The new global agreement that will come into force in 2020 can only protect us from a climate disaster if we make ambitious new efforts to close the mitigation gap in the pre-2020 period.
These new effort must be agreed by the end of 2014, largely under the Polish presidency, clearing the way to focus on the post-2020 agreement in 2015. Raising global mitigation ambition will require a clear and ambitious road map for scaling up finance and other support for action in developing countries.
By assuming the COP Presidency at this crucial moment, you have an enormous responsibility to use this position to use all your resources to ensure the highest level of ambition and progress towards a strong 2015 deal. You will be judged by the global community on the extent to which you live up to this responsibility.