Observer Research Foundation organised a closed door roundtable meeting of Indian Non-Government Experts on climate change with Amb. Antonio Garcia, Special Envoy for Climate Change, Peru.
Observer Research Foundation organised a closed door roundtable meeting of Indian Non-Government Experts on climate change with Amb. Antonio Garcia, Special Envoy for Climate Change, Peru.
Amb. Garcia was on a visit to India for preparatory consultations for the Conference of Parties (CoP) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Lima from December 1-12, 2014.
Besides Amb. Garcia, Mr. Rómulo Acurio, Joint Representative for Climate Change, Peru, some Ambassadors of the Group of Latin American and Caribbean (GRULAC) countries and a representative of French Embassy -- the next CoP Presidency at Paris -- participated in the meeting as Observers.
Mr. Sunjoy Joshi, Director, Observer Research Foundation, while delivering the welcome address, said that the preparatory consultations by the Peruvian Presidency are a critical step in the efforts that will help in coordination and in building confidence amongst all the parties which would eventually lead to the success of CoP-21 at Paris in 2015.
Mr Joshi said the Lima CoP was key as it was the last one before the CoP-21 going to take place in Paris, 2015. He noted that the last CoP had set up various institutions, bodies, processes, Green Climate Fund (GCF), Loss and Damage Mechanism, Technology Mechanism, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), etc. whose operationalisation was considered essential for effectively tackling various effects of Climate Change and also for generating sufficient confidence amongst the parties. So, at the Lima CoP sufficient progress and seriousness would need to be demonstrated regarding all the institutions but he stressed that there do remain several contested issues.
Mr. J. M. Mauskar, Advisor, ORF, who chaired the proceedings, invited Amb. Garcia for his oral presentation and remarks. Amb. Garcia, while stressing upon the fact that the Peru is in-coming Presidency and not yet the Presidency, mentioned that in a broad sense Peru would like CoP20 to build two things: (1) to build trust and the foundations for the 2015 agreement and (2) to build credibility for the mechanisms which exist or which have recently been created under the Convention.
Amb Garcia said that Peru’s strong expectation is to produce ’the Lima Draft’ as a clear and coherent text which reduces, as much as possible, the number of open unresolved issues to be addressed later in the negotiations. He also said that another mandate for Lima is to produce a decision on the information all countries should include when putting forward their nationally determined contributions. He also pointed out that the finance question is the key for advancing in negotiations and also in obtaining confidence from all Parties in this process.
Mr. Mauskar then invited the Indian Non-Government Experts to provide their inputs and ideas and requested them to indicate what could be the Indian ’red-lines’ in their perspective and suggest possible solutions too.
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