June 9, 2022

By Mathew Carr

Saudi Arabia, speaking on behalf of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDC) at UN climate talks in Bonn, blasted developed countries for breaking promises to cut emissions and provide finance on climate mitigation and adaptation.

Some comments, by Ms. Noura K. Alissa International Policy Analyst, Ministry of Energy, Saudi Arabia:

“Ambition of announcements and targets is no longer sufficient to your colleagues.

“This is the time for the ambition of implementation and action. Ambition is also multifaceted and interdependent.

“We cannot discuss ambition of action without discussing the critical gaps that remain — …[they are] critical and unprecedented, may I remind you.”

As well there are “significant pre-2020 gaps [lack of emission cuts through 2020 by richer countries] and commitments which we can’t ignore.

…”We cannot really look forward if we cannot credibly assess accountability of the past.

“We also need to urgently push for the required and long overdue balance between adaptation and mitigation…

“The GGA [Global Goal for Adaptation] for the LMDC is an overarching goal, which should be global in nature, but taking into account of course the diverse realities and unique national and regional circumstances.

“For the GGA designed to truly be a success and contribute to global efforts to achieving the Paris Agreement, we need to ensure that any adaptation related action would be able to feed into the achievement of the GGA as well as to be consistent and supportive of the temperature goals of the Paris agreement.

“And of course, let us be reminded that the current $100 billion goal [for climate finance] was set years ago [2009] and is still unfulfilled.

“Now a new goal is being established with no clear understandings of the challenge”….

“We remain deeply disappointed that there’s still no agreed definition of climate finance. And it has actually taken us this long to even set the mandate to the standing committee on finance to work on this area.

“This is very important to our group to be able to ensure accountability and transparency and also to be very clear that the support being provided by developed countries is indeed climate finance, and different from developmental assistance or other kinds of financing.

“And we need to be sure as well that when we are talking about the best available science, the outputs of the IPCC, we need to ensure that we are capturing the complete picture and understanding the IPCC outcomes in their entirety, of course, as opposed to taking a purely mitigation centric approach or cherry picking some of its outputs, which may not capture nuanced regional differences and some unique opportunities for innovation, technological deployment and international collaboration.

“It is also important to note with pride, of course, that many countries of the LMDC and across the developing world have NDCs netzero targets or strategies national climate strategies that are very ambitious, or may not utilise the same approaches or have the same timelines.

“Accordingly, we should continue to work together to maintain the bottom up nature of the Paris agreements and not look to standardise up ambition or associated approaches, but look to continue to learn from each other in this form and exchange positive practice.

“And although the science and IPCC reports highlight its importance, the work conducted thus far on response measures illustrates multiple shortcomings and limited progress in order for us to continue to raise ambition which is something that we discuss fervently and especially within this context.

“We need to, especially developing countries, understand the impact of the implementation of response measures and to develop tools and methodologies to assess such impact particularly in the context of the implementation phase of the Paris Agreement.

“We need to ensure that this topic is being given the weight that it deserves.

“We have a Race to Zero, a race to ambition. Can we have a race to equity and just transitions, as well?

“And colleagues in yesterday’s subsequent IPCC special report on working group three, the IPCC chair noted that without climate action, sustainable development cannot be achieved.

“Let me also add that without sustainable development, poverty eradication, economic diversification and just energy transitions, the global discussion on climate action would be lacking in its effective inclusion of equity, balance and ensuring that we are honestly and truthfully coming together to advance solutions for all. Thank you.“

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Negotiation Groups:

For context, I’m including this OPEC report from February on “Response Measures” — ie how nations are responding to climate action and the impact on GDP for nations, including oil producers:

(Changes nuance to nuanced …Warning: this story was produced using artificial intelligence)