The Contact Group on Annex I Parties Emission Reductions met at 6pm on Saturday December 12. Before this meeting was a meeting on mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, in which the chair was getting frustrated at countries inserting brackets into the Kyoto text and not really getting anywhere..

Co-chair: apologised for late start. other co-chair still in another meeting. After CMP, contact groups resumed their work. Part of understanding from informal was that we would work under chairs text. Start working on Annex to 3.9 Kyoto stuff. Please focus comments on chairs text and don’t insert everything.

Japan: sensitivity comes from numbers part. how to define absolute emission reduction targets needs to be solved in consultation. [Update: I think this is where Japan put brackets around the whole 'numbers' section of the text, which had significant consequences for the rest of the negotiations.]

Chair: brackets around the whole thing anyway.

Australia: on status of text, we are prepared to engage in a discussion on chairs text without prejudice to CMP on amendments to the Kyoto Prototcol. Question of who has the austhority to lodge the amended text. Discussion very much aligned to LCA discussion. Need to go to presidency, time is short, need political process to sort this out. Assume discussing pp.2-5 in chairs text, is that all?

Chair: pp3-5.

Australia: will come back with a number of specific comments

Russia: would like to get back to p2. bracket [3][4] on carryover. Support Japan in bracketing text question. Something about bottom up approach instead of top down approach.

EU: acronym EU is correct. On the text, when we had meeting with ?india? there are large parts missing, which is EU amendment text, amendments to annex A, introduce new gases, pages from fccc/cmp/kp/2009/2 . You could cut and paste into this text.

Chair: would like to collect more general views now.

Canada: our position is the same as that of Japan. Some reservations about p3-5.

New Zealand: has similar views to Canada, issues on linking with LCA text. would like to see flexibility to adopt single base year that is not a common base year. We had proposed amendments around Annex C.

Zambia: gambia would like to reaffirm african position that to (something) numbers here, any delay is recipe for problems.

Australia: there are typos.

??: refers to EU slides and if the wrong decisions were made then there could be an increase in emissions and not a decrease.

South Africa: point of this exercise is to not fix any loopholes, but through [couldn't hear because someone opened the back door] something about article 4.2. Minimise putting new issues into text unless absolutely necessary. We are prepared to move on the text in front of us. Concerned about Japan and others that this may not be a text we can work on. This has implications about how we proceed. Clarity would be appreciated.

Chair: notes that this discussion goes beyond the scope of the numbers.

South Aftrica: Concerned that the whole text has brackets around it.

China: also share sentiments expressed by South Africa. We can delete everything here, and then delete everything there, and be left with nothing. Not something that we want to happen.

Sudan: Sudan supports what Gambia said, we either have numbers, or no commitment at all.

Micronesia: Recognise efforts to achieve an outcome, and know what these numbers mean. Focus more on substance and get to the bottom of the numbers. Have some information on technical data sources on previous slide presentation. Consider limits on offsets, mechansisms, and use of surplus AAUs.

Chair: is distributing micronesias slides.

India: support G77 comments. spent many years looking at numbers. want at least 40% aggregate. We see that the foot dragging. Need numbers that correspond to limiting global temperatures by 2 degrees. Seen a great deal of obfuscation. Tactics that these are intended for a collapse to the Kyoto protocol. Attempts to sink kyoto carries great risks. would urge annex I to look carefully at broader consequences.

Chair: seeking comments on text, section by section. but first..

Australia: having looked at text, we wonder are typographic, p3. We are not sure that the table correctly has list of annex I countries, e.g. Kasakhstan, turkey, US has signed but not ratified. Should respect that they signed to that. havent checked every single annex I country. I’m not sure what it has for us now that there is both EU and individual countries??. Perhaps they can fill us in. On article 3 par 1 bis, [2013 to 2018] should mean [2013 to 2017]. See it as beyond bold (ie refering to period, rather than final year).

Chair: certainly right on 2018, check other things.

Turkey: maintain non-annex B status, reject inclusion in table

EU: with that succession, EU takes all obligations from EC. was called EC back when old agreement set up??

chair: not sure from legal point of view how EU/EC issue works.

Australia: we are the legal experts

EU: we are ready to prepare answers to all of the questions, but when/where do we do that?

Chair: ask Australia and others to give specific questions to the secretariat, and we will make time for you to answer.

Australia: you might recall that we supplied a question on this previously. EU/Ec is a question on compliance.

Bolivia: Worried about text in brackets, but now more hopeful. Annex B. Something about historical responsibility. [couldn't hear]

Canada: disappoited that table does not reflect option of alternative base years. blah blah 1990 as reference year

Micronesia: [couldn't hear] in our view we don’t see the need for a reference year, could have separate table??

CHair: there were reflections on whether to put specific years or use X1, X2. But there are so many possible ones.

Eu: happy to engage on this text, despite quite a number of issues to clarify. notes some missing parties, US has been deleted, while still in Kyoto table. Issue with Belarus*. Issue with economies in transition. There is an issue on ?? who is trying to inscribe itself into Annex I. We have put in suggestions for members of article 21, to expand annex B more quickly. fccc/kp/awg/2009/10/addendum 2 on page 11.

Australia: On annex b table, lost track of who is in the potential Eu bubble, is cyprus in the bubble not being an annex I country? On Turkey, they are an Annex I Party to the convention. I thought they said they are not an Annex I party to the KP. Convention has obligations for Annex I. Clarify wrt article 3.1, annex I countries being inscribed in Annex B.

Turkey: non annex B. would provide further information after more discussions.

Belarus: commenting on Eu, I don’t like to suggest we go to initial table with a footnote on QELRos and annex B, some amendment which has not yet entered into force. Why is this so? long procedure about amendment ratification.

Co-chair: turn to p4, article 3, para 1 bis. Australia also raised some points. Are there other comments on this or other parts of the text?

New-Zealand: annex 1  bis is a rather interesting way to increase annex I ambition. not at all clear why there is a range, or range that does not reflect the aggregate. range is entirely superfluous.

EU: want to introduce someting about commitment period, then introduce “in the order of 30% below 1990 by 2020″ and then “80-95% below 1990 by 2050″.

Bolivia: Article 3.1 of KP had “at least 5%”. My view is ??[couldn't hear]

South Africa: calculation – something about start year.

Chair: confronted by questions of given year or commitment period etc.

Canada: qwanted to express support for general concept of EU. Wherever possible, refer to long term ambition, and current targets are on a trajectory to much more ambitions outcome.

Micronesia: [Couldn't hear] tehn something on reference years

Australia: commented that commitment period was based on a straight line. agree with bolivia and micronesia, that language should reflect language used in first commitment period “by at least X”. X determined by annex B. We don’t have a figure at the moment. Thinking something like 15% based on aggregate.

Russia: note Eu proposal on -?% by ?. Lets not try to go further into future.

EU: wrt to russia, not about compliance, but it gives an order of magnitude. something about commitment period, similar comment to before.

NZ: importance of getting commitment period sorted out. like to see things on screen or paper, awful lot of confusion out there about targets, QELROs etc.

Russia: like to see the text on the screen. something about top down vs bottom up.

Micronesia: [couldn't hear] 45% in 2020.

Japan: Australia wondered about typography. Enormous number.

Chair: close for tonight, next meeting on monday we will put text on screen, and we will most probably put non paper reflecting discussion

Australia: question for secretariat: how many more slots do we have?

Sudan: what about the ?time we lost last night are wwe going to be compensated.

South Africa: ?would like to see proposals worked into text?

Australia: really getting worried about time. Would like to have written comments in advance.

Chair: certainly helpful, non-paper has to be done tonight, editors not working tomorrow.

Secretariat: Continue in comntact groups, trying to slot everything in on monday, numbers will have 3 slots. clashing issue with LCA. go from 10am to 9pm.

China: thankyou and have a nice sunday