PNG proposes a ministerial meeting to provide political guidance before Cancun

By Makereta Komai for Climate Pasifika in Bonn, Germany

07 June 2010, Bonn, Germany – A proposal to convene a ministerial meeting outside the United Nations climate change body’s scheduled sessions has been proposed by Papua New Guinea, in the lead up to the Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Mexico in December this year.

The proposal drew mixed reactions from State Parties at the climate change negotiations in Bonn this week.

PNG said the ministerial session would review the outcomes of three scheduled negotiations in June, August and October before any final conclusions are presented at the COP session in Cancun.

“This is an attempt to avoid the failure of Copenhagen last year. The ministers did not have time to meet and review the negotiating text, said PNG.

“The meeting should not run parallel to the negotiations but feed into providing advice and political guidance on crunch issues to allow negotiators to do the final touches to the final resolutions before Cancun.

Recognising time and financial constraints, PNG suggested limited participation with regional and negotiating groupings represented.

“Transparency and inclusiveness are important, thus the meeting should be open ended, said the PNG proposal.

There are two scheduled one weeklong negotiations planned for August and October this year.

The pre-COP ministerial meeting is proposed to be convened between October and December.

Spain and the European Union favoured the idea of getting political guidance before COP16 in Mexico.

Brazil expressed caution about holding another ministerial meeting before Cancun, as technical negotiations need to have enough time to clean up the negotiating text.

“The proposal is difficult especially if Parties wanted to keep the process open and inclusive until Cancun, said Brazil.

Singapore and Venezuela did not favour the idea saying negotiators already have a tight work schedule and there are no funds to hold smaller meetings.

PNG’s proposal will be discussed further before Parties decide whether it should be reflected in the draft conclusions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) contact group.

Ms Komai will be covering the Bonn Climate Change negotiations from 31 May – 11 June 2010, thanks to support from Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). She will provide daily coverage of the negotiations via PACNEWS and the SPREP website www.sprep.org, the climate pasifika blogspot, http://climatepasifika.blogspot.com and the PINA Green page http://green.pina.com.fj/