by Trudi Zundel
as part of our attempt to keep people up to speed, this note was sent to YOUNGO on Monday Night. It is by no means complete, and we do not claim to be "objective" (whatever that is)
LCA
There was a huge fight in LCA today over a new Chairs text; the text had blank pages under finance, adaptation, technology transfer, capacity building, and response measures. A Chair's text is supposed to synthesise the views of countries, and developing countries outrightly rejected the text because it was so blatantly biased towards the interests of developed countries.
Annex 1 countries refuse to talk about finance and means of implementation because there are already mechanisms to address those issues: the GCF, the Technology Mechanism, the Adaptation Framework, etc. While this is a logical argument, perhaps, developing countries pointed out that those mechanisms are empty and ignored so far–they are worried that not having them in a final LCA text will let them peter out and die. Instead, developed countries want to focus only on outstanding issues–mitigation, shared vision, new markets. But developing countries were quick to point out that A1 countries still need to fulfill their commitments under those mechanisms.
Developing countries want to see a balanced outcome that places equal emphasis on all components of the original LCA track–not only mitigation, but also adaptation, finance, tech transfer, and capacity building. The original LCA mandate, the Bali Action Plan that came out of COP13, calls for work to be finished on all of those pieces before the LCA can close.
In a final outcome, developed countries want any text that's not agreed to be left blank; having a "no text" option on the table is a terrifying prospect to developing countries, and the perfect cop-out for developed countries to shirk their finance obligations. While not everything needs to be decided, having a place for those issues in the final LCA decision will ensure (or help ensure) that they don't get left in the dust.
No agreement was reached on what to do next, but developing countries called almost unanimously for the Chair of the meeting to put together a more balanced document before their next meeting later in the day, which is probably what they're meeting about at QNCC right now!
ADP
ADP was in closed sessions all day today–the informal plenary was postponed until sometime tomorrow. Parties are mostly discussing a schedule for the next year of work and leaving the brunt of the content for the intersessionals, but clearly something got contentious today that pushed the meetings long–we'll hear about what that was in the morning