President,

1. I have the honour to speak on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. The Group wishes to thank you for joining this Contact Group meeting this evening to engage with Parties.

2. We wish to convey our appreciation to the Parties, Co-Chairs, facilitators and convenors of the informal informal groups that have worked very hard over the past two days.

3. We appreciate the opportunity to convey our impressions of the progress so far as we are now on Wednesday night and we believe this to be a timely opportunity to make an assessment of where we are and to make the necessary changes to accelerate the progress.

4. The G77 and China wishes to register some concern with the management of the process and with the progress made so far that need to be addressed. We believe that if these are addressed now, we will be in a better position to deliver a strong negotiated outcome under the ADP.

5. Let me confirm that it is the Group's intention to resolve as many issues as we can, so that we do not create a situation where the Ministers need to negotiate text with each other. From our perspective, we need to provide texts with clear options to the Ministers for them to make the political decisions. Given them an unwieldy text would be a reflection of a process that would have failed them.

6. The Group is very concerned with the slow and uneven progress we are making. In some areas, partners do not seem to be willing to fully engage. On many issues, particularly on means of implementation, some partners maintain their "no options" approach, which we believe is not conducive to making progress. We assume that this is a strategy to escalate as many of the issues to Ministers. There seems to be a reluctance by some partners to engage on many of the issues of key concern to the developing countries.

7. As far as the management of the process is concerned, the Group notes that there is a proliferation of groups, in the form of facilitation, informals and spin-off group meetings that take place concurrently on the same issues. A multitude of spin off groups on various aspects of the same subject matter were created. This creates a difficulty for small delegations. In this regard, we appeal to the Presidency, Co-Chairs and secretariat to re-look at how meetings are scheduled. It may assist if the number of informals are reduced, as some of them reach a point where there are only political issues remaining.

8. Advance notice on schedules is also critical. Some meetings are announced minutes before they are supposed to start, others are announced late at night leaving little time for preparation and coordination.

9. With regard to the facilitation and informal groups, there still appears to be inconsistencies in approach. The Group is also concerned that the work in some of the groups is not time bound and too open-ended to ensure a result.

10. Some facilitators are apparently allowing new text to be introduced and are referring to old submissions by Parties, whilst others are not. There is a risk that this could lead to a proliferation of new proposals and the text ballooning. The G77 and China is showing constraint, we need the Presidency to appeal to Parties not to follow this path. We need to streamline the text and reduce options at this time, aiming for bridging proposals and not including new concepts.

11. The fragmentation and simultaneous convening of groups are putting pressure on the transparency and inclusiveness of the process. The limitation of seating in the Contact Group also raises this question.

12. Regarding the text, we are concerned that there is no clarity on what the outcome of our work will be. We want to make the following proposal:

13. Secretariat should be tasked to make a collation of the text developed in the groups, doing "light touch" technical editing, without changing the content, streamlining and proper ordering under the headings of the current text.

14. This collation must be made available by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning in order for Parties to gain an overview of where we are in terms of text-based work. From 08h00 to 10h00 the relevant spin-off groups can assess whether the collation is indeed a correct reflection of their work in order to be ready for consideration at the Contact Group at 10h00. The Contact Group must make a determination which informals must continue; and some informals and spin-off groups as required should be sent away to do further work on the text. We suggest that spin-off groups deal with issues in a holistic manner - including decision text - to limit the number of spin-off groups that will work at the same time.

15. The Contact Group should also identify those areas where no further progress is likely to be made in the spin-off groups. Those issues, as well as the cross-cutting issues and the duplications should be further dealt with in the Contact Group.

16. We note the deadline set in the scenario note. However, we would propose that should the work in the facilitation and spin-off groups make good progress, such work should not be interrupted unnecessarily on account of an artificial deadline.

17. If sufficient progress is being made, we would suggest that the secretariat prepare a second collation of the text developed in the spin-off groups to be made available for consideration by the Contact Group on Friday evening.

18. That a second collation of the text refined by spin-off groups be made available on Friday morning for a reading in the Contact Group.

19. The Group reiterates its proposal that the Contact Group should address cross-cutting issues, such as differentiation, progression, ambition and legal form as soon as possible in order to unlock consensus in areas where these issues are encountered under the specific elements. The Contact Group also needs to address the many duplications on the same issue across different issues that can only be consistently addressed if we have a holistic view of the text.

20. This proposal made by the G77 and China is made in the hope that it will assist you in moving our process forward.

21. We reaffirm our commitment to the process and support for your leadership.

I thank you.