CAN Intervention on Equity at Bonn ADP2 Special Event with ADP Co-Chairs, 2 May 2013

 

CAN Intervention at Special ADP2 Roundtable on 2 May 2013

Thank you, Co-Chairs, for this opportunity!

My name is Mohamed Adow, and I'm speaking for the Climate Action Network.

CAN is calling for an EQUITY REVIEW in parallel with the scientific and political review, by which I mean the first periodical review (2013-15).

This brief intervention will not allow me to explain in detail what I mean with the EQUITY REVIEW, but it will allow me to share this one key point – When pledging their targets, Parties will be aware that their pledges will be reviewed against equity criteria as well.

A first step towards this review would be Parties agreeing to the underlying principles – the equity principles embodied in the Convention. The four core principles, clearly, are adequacy, responsibility, capacity and development need – the principles that must necessarily underlie any DYNAMIC operationalization of CBDR & RC. 

In a next step, the Secretariat would invite submissions from equity experts associated with both Parties and Observer organizations.  Submissions would focus on the Convention principles, and on indicators that express those principles.  It would compile and synthesize these submissions, and solicit expert assessment of their relative implications and of the best manner by which the Parties can use them.

Mr Co-chair, let me stress this point, what is needed is an Equity Reference framework which the Parties can use to review each other’s proposals in the later part of the political negotiations.

The key point is that, when developing their pledges at the national level, Parties would be fully aware of the fact that these pledges will be evaluated against, not only the science, but the Convention’s equity principles as well.

And after the evaluation of the pledges, Parties will want to scale up their pledges according to the suggestions of the scientific and equity reviews

We are calling for a process that allows a COP decision on the EQUITY REVIEW at Warsaw:

• Parties and Observers should be called upon to make submissions to the ADP chairs on relevant equity principles and views on the proposed Equity Review.  These submissions should be made by May 27, 2013.
• The Secretariat should organize a Roundtable on equity principles and the Equity Review in June 2013.
• Decisions text should be drafted during the autumn session.
• A decision on the Equity Review should be made at COP19 in Warsaw.