WWF issued the following statement from WWF’s head of delegation, Tasneem Essop, in reaction to the issuance of this morning’s draft compilation negotiating text:
“Clearly, finding all the solutions to protect the world from the ravages of climate change is going to take hard negotiations and multiple drafts. We’re still early in the process, but negotiators have a lot of work to do if they’re going to turn this draft negotiating text into an ambitious and fair agreement. Overall, the text is mostly unchanged from what they were working with going into Paris.
“Negotiators have pulled together a text that has the core elements of the kind of agreement that heads of state said they wanted to see in their scene-setting speeches earlier this week. The changes so far are a mixed bag.
“It is clear that progress has been too slow. In some areas, the options are now clearer and better structured, but generally we still have very divergent options in this version of the text. It is good to see that despite some fears the text has not ballooned further with lots of new insertions though.”
“Right now, they’re still just rearranging the deck chairs on the ship to get a better view of the iceberg.”