No see! No hear! No say?

Yesterday’s Joint Contact Group (JCG) on the 2013-2015 review was like reliving a bad dream. Saudi Arabia used procedural arguments to prevent progress towards the drafting of a COP decision building on the robust climate science contained in the Structured Expert Dialogue (SED). That’s backsliding to the dark ages of the 1990, Saudi Arabia!

It was also disappointing to witness China and India siding with the Kingdom rather than standing with countries where acting on the messages of the SED is a matter of survival. All this prevented the JCG from recommending appropriate action on the basis of the key messages highlighted throughout the SED.

As a reminder, those messages are: we are not on track to a “below 2°C path”, 2°C warming would be dangerous, and keeping warming to 1.5°C would avoid many disastrous impacts.

Rather than wasting more negotiating hours with delaying tactics, Parties should consider what their mitigation policies must be if they respond adequately.