Chair. This is co-sponsored by Germany, Peru and Thailand. There is a revised text based on the informal consultations. We will start with the title and then focus on the preambular and operative paragraphs. I now open the floor to the delegation of Thailand to provide the introduction.

Title

Thailand. The title has been proposed originally with an addition at the end “including measures to protect the environment”. A request was made by the USA to amend with “taking into account…” while there was a reserve from Iran and South Africa on the mention of the environment, so this has not been approved yet.

Chair: Are there comments for now? I see none, does that mean there is agreement? Please let us know if there is willingness to remove your reservations. I don’t see any comment. Then let’s leave the title pending and move on to PP1.

PP1

Chair: I see this was agreed in informals. Can we agree to PP1, PP2 and PP3 all together? Bearing in mind that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

PP1bis

Chair: I see no comment on PP1bis. I see that Russia has a comment on reordering PPs. I see no comments, so we can reorder the PPs.

PP2

Chair: Any comment here? I see a proposal from Iran here to add “applicable” before “international law” in this para. I see no objection.

Thailand: This is agreed language starting from 2017, so this wording proposed has been intact for the last five years. One distinguished delegate asked to add phrases to the para, but it doesn’t enjoy consensus at the moment, a number of delegations expressed their willingness to keep the original text.

USA: The USA continues to prefer, as we indicated in Informals, to retain the original language as proposed.

Chair: May I ask Iran if they are willing to withdraw their edit? I see no comment, so we will keep PPT and continue discussing in informals.

PP4:

Chair: This was approved in informals and will be moved as PP7bis.

Thailand: We agreed earlier to change the order of the PPs upon request from Russia, and so PP7bis was also agreed as it follows logically on that request. So there is no need for further discussions on this.

Chair: This is now agreed.

PP5

Chair: Again, this has been agreed in informals and is now agreed in CoW.

Australia: This is about the order of the PPs. We had a discussion in informals. Russia made indeed a proposal. We proposed that we start with the general paragraphs and this was agreed in informals by the Russian delegation.

Thailand: When we said “agreed in informals”, we already accepted the Australian request to order the paras with general PPs first. So there is, I believe, no further implications.

PP6

Chair: I see no comments on this, so now agreed in CoW.

PP7

Chair: This is agreed in informals, any comments? No comments, this is now agreed in CoW.

PP8

Chair: also agreed in informals, any comments? No comments, this is now agreed in CoW.

PP9

Chair: Agreed in informals, and I see no comments. Adopted in CoW.

PP10

Chair: Agreed in informals, any comments? I see none. Adopted in Cow.

PP11

Chair: No comments? Agreed in CoW.

PP12

Chair: There are a number of proposals here. I would like to invite the delegations to introduce the paragraph.

Thailand: Thank you. The sponsors have proposed the mention of the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC, but others have also requested mentions of other Conventions on biological diversity and to combat desertification. Some support this, while others have proposed only making a general mention of “relevant international legal instruments” instead in an alternative PP proposal. We are still discussing this in informal consultations. We cannot agree yet on what we would prefer.

Russia: We want to make the following proposal: we would like to limit ourselves to a list of the documents that are important to other delegations without mention of specific measures. So our proposal is: “recalling the work of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the work under the Convention on biological diversity, as well as the work under the United Nations Convention to combat desertification through the land degradation neutrality”. This is our proposal to form the basis of a compromise. We should not mention other instruments that don’t have a link with the theme of this resolution.

Chair: Are there any comments on this proposal?

Thailand: The proposal just made was not very far from what was originally proposed by the sponsors and others who proposed amendments to the PP. Thailand therefore has no objections to the proposal made by Russia.

France: We have taken note of the proposal for PP12. Unfortunately, we are not convinced as to the need for this proposal. We prefer the proposal in PP12alt as it is more detailed and more linked to the draft resolution, to the extent that the current version of PP12alt includes information that is relevant to the resolution. It is important that the resolution that we will adopt should be as updated as possible. So this is the reason why we would prefer to support PP12alt.

Germany: We would like to echo the comment from France. We have a broad agreement on language on PP12alt and for the same reason we would like to keep it. I don’t want to go back to the substantive discussion we had in the informal that shows why all these conventions have a role to play for this resolution, but this is the reason why we would like to keep PP12alt as is.

Chair: I see no further comments. Then PP12, PP12alt and PP12bis will be taken up in informals.

PP13, 14, 15

Chair: all three PPs have been agreed in informals. These are now agreed in CoW.

PP16 and 17

Chair: These were agreed in informals and are now agreed in CoW.

OP1

Chair: I recall we are coming to the end of the 40 minutes so I ask whether we can move on to L3.