CAN Intervention on Equity in the COP18 ADP Special Event, 1 December, 2012

CAN Intervention in the ADP Special Event on Equity, 1 December 2012

Delivered by Mohamed Adow

We heard the loud and clear call for urgent and ambitious international agreement. But the question is – what can enable the parties to agree to such an agreement?
 
CAN believes that an agreement on effort sharing – an equitable approach to sharing the costs of mitigation and adaptation amongst countries – would enable parties to agree such an agreement, with sufficient mitigation and finance to support the developing countries.
  
Countries are concerned that they will be asked to do more than is their fair share, and conversely that other countries will ‘free ride’ off their effort.  

CAN believes that we are in a rather unique position in the negotiations at the moment, and we think this is the moment to pull together a strategic approach that can lead to an effective and ambitious outcome in 2015 under the ADP.

One that will protect the climate system; share the effort to address climate change fairly; and share the means of implementation equitably

To deliver the ADP vision under Work Stream 1, Parties must work to interactively exchange their views and positions on equity and start a work programme  and make clear progress towards ways and options for the allocation of fair shares of the global effort.

CAN believes that it is helpful to cluster the various equity principles into three groups:
* Precautionary or adequacy principles – because a climate catastrophe would be the ultimate injustice,
* CBDR+RC, which remains key, but must be interpreted and operationalized dynamically,  
* Equitable Access to Sustainable Development – because just and sustainable development is human rights that must be both protected and promoted by the climate regime.  
Parties should not use equity to avoid action and share failure, but as the convention says “protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind

To achieve this, the ADP WS 1 goal must be to cooperatively limit climate disruption, while supporting the developing countries with the means to keep within the remaining constrained carbon budget, and to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.