Mr. Chairman, Antigua and Barbuda takes the floor on behalf of the Group of 77 and China to again express its appreciation and congratulation to the Government and people of Ghana for their hospitality and support over the past ten days. We thank you and your vice chair for your effort to keep us focused and moving the process forward. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the secretariat for the support they provided to these talks.

Mr. Chairman, we called for urgency, focus and a new mindset at the start of this meeting. We did not achieve this. However, these discussions were more productive than earlier meetings.  The Group hopes that we can build on this.  The Group of 77 and China and indeed all parties make considerable financial and personal investments in these meetings.  The Global Climate Crisis is intensifying as scientists and ordinary people from the South to the North poles experience and watch helplessly the droughts, floods, fires, avalanches, loss of species and habitats from Climate Change.

They look to us for a solution.

The young lady who served me tea in the hotel on Sunday morning, having seen me on television on Saturday and recognized that I was at the Climate Change meeting, told her friends that she knew me because I was staying at her hotel, asked that we agree on one thing -  "How to stop Climate Change".  When I told her that we would not agree, she went silent, and then asked,  "Why?"  I could not answer.

The Group of 77 and China doubts whether any of us can explain why we are not able to agree on how stop Climate Change that threatens all of us.

Mr. Chairman, we have spent more that one third of the time allowed us by the Bali Action Plan. The progress we have made in clarifying the substantive elements of the Bali Action Plan as well as in the arrangements and work program for future talks for the AWG LCA, while significant, do not put us in a position of comfort towards Copenhagen. We have to change our mindset; identify the critical actions required to strengthen the implementation of the Convention, focus on these and make the most productive use of the limited time keeping in mind our 2009 Copenhagen target.

Mr. Chairman, the mandate the AWG-LCA is to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012.  The process by which we do this however should be within the mandate and framework of the convention and we should be careful that we adhere to this approach and should not be distracted by suggestions and approaches that can lead us astray.

Mr. Chairman, we must thoughtfully limit the number of formal contact groups within the AWG-LCA while better coordinating similar issues between the four Subsidiary Bodies.  Further, we must find a way to bring 'focus' to our discussions in order to make material progress.  

Therefore, we suggest that we organize the work of Contact Groups by dedicating 'blocks of time' to specific issues.  Further, in consultation with the Parties, we urge the SBSTA & SBI chairs to consider reducing the time slots dedicated to overlapping issues and allocate those time slots to discussions under the AWG-LCA.  The comprehensive treatment of forestry issues provides a good example of this need, and possibility.

Mr. Chairman, these issues are very important to Group of 77 and China in order to accommodate the many small delegations within the G77 whose views become marginalized by the inability to cover overlapping meetings.

Mr. Chairman, the Group of 77 and China has urged that as we move to the meeting in Poznan we focus and interrogate "possible" solutions being proposed. I refer to a few for illustration:

1. ODA: A target of 0.7% of GNP of developed countries was established since 1970 was necessary as support for achieving a 5-7% growth in developing countries. In 1991 developed countries achieved 0.33%. This percentage decreased almost every year to 2003 and only returned to that 0.33% level in 2005. The bulk of the increase in 2004 and 2005 was for debt reduction and emergency relieve and administration. Increase in ODA up to 0.7% can not be counted as support for mitigation and adaptation.

2. The market and the private sector: neither of these will work to deliver investment or technology on appropriate terms for mitigation and more so for adaptation. They have to be incentivised. How will the developed economies correct the failures in the market and incentivised the private investors. National policies by developing countries will not be sufficient.

3. The intellectual property rights agreement (IPRs) and the trade related investment measures (TRIMs) increase the price of technology and remove the ability of developing countries to impose performance requirements, including for energy efficiency or carbon emissions. How will these regimes be modified? Developing countries alone cannot impose these required policy changes.

Mr. Chairman, the Group of 77 and China wishes to underscore that our work up until Copenhagen should take into consideration the urgent need for parties to be in a position to "protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."  In this regard, the Convention mandates developed country Parties to take the lead in combating climate change and its adverse effects. It is essential that this be demonstrated and substantiated in the process.

Thank You Mr. Chairman.