CAN Intervention: KP Ministerial Dialogues at SB40s, 6 June, 2014

Thank you President Korolec and Minister Pulgar-Vidal, 

I am speaking on behalf of the Climate Action Network.

Distinguished Ministers, 

This Ministerial meeting is a result of your previous agreement that developed countries' targets for 2020 needed to be more ambitious. This promise was the precondition of the Durban agreement to start the negotiations for the 2015 agreement. Even more importantly, increasing your near-term targets is essential if we are to keep the window to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees C open. This need to revise the 2020 targets applies to all developed country Parties, both inside and outside of the Kyoto Protocol. 

We are disappointed to see that very few ministers have bothered to come here. Is this because Ministers have not been briefed about what is necessary to avoid even more devastating climate impacts than the world is already experiencing? Or is it because Ministers know this all too well, but did not dare to come here to admit that they are going to do nothing in the face of the undeniable scientific evidence of what a failure to act now will mean? 

While some Parties are making more progress in cutting emissions than others, what unsettles us the most is that not a single developed country has indicated their intention to increase their targets for 2020, neither those countries that remain under the Kyoto Protocol or, even worse, from those who have stepped outside (or were never in).  What we have heard today is nothing less than a spectrum of non-commitments. 

Thank you.