Sai Navoti, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, made a strong intervention on Wednesday during the ADP ambition roundtable discussions. He underscored the inescapable reality that short-term ambition is essential to keep global warming below 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius. Thus, immediately raising ambition in the short-term must be the priority in Bangkok and on the road to Doha. A recap of his intervention, which spells out a possible way forward, can be found below:

Colleagues:

The workplan on enhancing mitigation ambition (the “Workplan”) must be prioritized under the ADP as a matter of urgency so that immediate and meaningful progress is made towards closing the 2020 ambition gap.

We must close the ambition gap to preserve a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2C or 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Anything less would entail an unacceptable level of risk for small islands, whose development prospects, viability and survival depend on it.

The Workplan should support, not detract from ongoing efforts to raise ambition on under the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP so that those bodies can reach a successful completion of their work in Doha.

The Workplan should be conducted in accordance with the principles and provisions of the Convention, in particular the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and equity, and the obligation of developed countries to take the lead in combating climate change.

The objective of Workplan activities should be to enable domestic action that can then be translated into more ambitious emission reduction commitments for developed countries and more ambitious NAMAs for developing countries.

In the context of these activities:

• Developed countries should identify domestic policies and measures that would enable them to raise the level of ambition of their current economy-wide emission reduction commitments and targets, as well as any barriers to doing so.
• Developing countries should identify the means of implementation required, including finance, technology and capacity building, that would enable them to develop and implement new, more ambitious nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs).
• Lastly, developed countries should identify the potential scale and nature of new financial resources, transfer of technology and capacity building they can make available for enabling more ambitious NAMAs, as well as any barriers to doing so.

The Workplan should benefit from and be motivated by regular high-level engagement, including initially a round table at the pre-COP ministerial in South Korea.

• The Workplan must respect the sovereign rights and development priorities of all Parties. The Workplan should advance when possible Parties’ sustainable development goals and efforts to alleviate poverty.

In Doha:

• Annex I Kyoto Protocol Parties should submit new, more ambitious, single number QELROs as part of a legally-binding second commitment period and Annex I non-Kyoto Protocol Parties should adopt comparable commitments under the LCA that in aggregate result in an aggregate emission reduction of greater than 45% below 1990 levels;
• Annex I Parties should move to the higher end of pledged ranges and beyond, and any conditionalities should be removed;
• Annex I Parties should commit to immediately ramp up the provision of new and additional financial resources, technology and capacity building to enable non-Annex I Parties to fully implement and over-perform on existing NAMAs and adopt more ambitious NAMAs; and
• Non-Annex I Parties that have not submitted NAMAs should be encouraged to do so, particularly those with sufficient capacity.

In addition, and in order to build on the completed work of the AWG-KP and AWG-LCA and build on the increased ambition achieved, Parties should agree in Doha on a comprehensive schedule activities for 2013 to be conducted under the Workplan.