 On this panel now, from left to right, we have Salim al-Huk. Extremely familiar to anyone closely following the climate discussions, but especially those who've been at the founder of the NC Days, in fact. So we're very privileged to have you, Salim. Salim is affiliated with IED, but in particular now with the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, leading many initiatives, but also very closely following some of the core negotiating teams instrumental to the success of the Paris Agreement. So we're very keen to hear about him, about where we are at this point, with the negotiations and beyond. Ashala Bezing is a principal researcher at IED, but in particular here because she also advises the chair of the LEC Group in these negotiations. She's been intensely embedded in the negotiations the past week. We're very grateful to have a bit of your time, a little bit of the time that might allow you to catch up on sleep in what must have been a very intense week and with a very intense week ahead. We're very grateful you're here with us to share some of your reflections on how things are going. And finally, Michelle Winthrop is, it was interesting we met before this panel and she indicated that I should not be expecting too much of an in-depth knowledge on all little nitty-gritty detail of every aspect of the convention. Because in the end, she camps more from the development background. And I explained that that's actually exactly what we're after. So Michelle is with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in the Republic of Ireland and generally just working on development from a climate resilience perspective, but also here as a negotiator. So she has been following particular tracks in the negotiations, we shared in her perspective on what's going well, what's not going well, maybe where we still have obstacles to overcome. So I'll be asking each of these panelists to first share their general reflections on maybe two time frames of where we're at right now. So we're halfway to Scott. As you all know, the middle weekend is a sort of tiny low in this rhythm of these two weeks. Ministers will start arriving. The first high-level events are appearing tomorrow. It's already obvious weekend. But it's going to be intensifying in terms of the political deals that need to be made. But all the technical work should sort of be behind us now. So we have a sense of how much progress we're making and what the sticking points are. This cop is also still seen as a sort of technical cop in many ways. People are sort of expecting this cop to contribute to a path that should be easier after the Paris Agreement was that big political accomplishments that now just needs to be implemented. So I'm also keen to hear your reflections on where we are in terms of that cycle. Have we indeed made progress these past two years after Paris? And are we on track to meet that political ambition that was expressed there? What's needed? Where are we making progress? Maybe also where do we still have some ways to go? And I'll ask you to sort of do that keeping in mind not all the specific articles and all the negotiating texts that maybe not even everyone here, many of you not being technical negotiators, but people coming from practice will be familiar with. But actually looking at it also from these lenses. The themes in the broader climate discussions that matter to us in the real world. Resilience to empowerment and access, value and lived experience, local knowledge, often not something that you recognize in the corridors here in Bonn. Transparency, downward accountability, and finally this notion of shared resilience. And the question whether the national government usually negotiating here in Bonn will be able to do this on their own. First, Salim, if I may ask you for some initial reflections first. Sure. Thank you very much, Martin, and good morning to everybody. So first, let me make a general overarching remark about where I think we are in the global discussions, decision making on how to tackle the climate change issue at the global level by governments. And in my view, we made a major achievement with the Paris Agreement. We now have an agreement to take actions by 2030. And this one, COP23, and last year's COP22, and then subsequent COPs, are very much about putting us on the track to implement that big agreement that we achieved in Paris. And in many ways, the emphasis now has shifted away from negotiating more text to actually implementation on the ground. And I made a somewhat facetious remark last year that the COP saying that future COPs should be what I call inside out COPs, where the practitioners who are implementing should be given center stage. And the negotiators should be given small rooms on the outside to sit and negotiate, because they don't matter anymore. What matters is implementation. And I'll give you a great illustration of that in the last few days and weeks that we've seen. The biggest country, most important country in the world, most richest country in the world, headed by its president, has decided to withdraw. But the people of the United States have not decided to withdraw. They have decided to stay with us. And they're in the Paris Agreement. And we have Governor Jerry Brown. And we had Vice President Al Gore, in fact, staying in this hotel. I don't know if you saw him this morning. He's here. They matter. They are going to implement the Paris Agreement. The United States is going to meet its Paris Agreement target, despite what Mr. Trump wants. And that's what matters. And that's where we are. We are the implementers. We matter more than they matter. Well, that's an inspiring start. Hachala, how do you look at this being in a negotiation? Do you still matter, actually? Does it matter what you're doing? Yes, I think. She matters. She matters. I think they hurt Salim. That's why they put us in the Bula Zone, which is really boring. Bula Zone is very, very exciting. And you have seats and, you know, so far, so many places. We don't have any of those. It's really boring. I think they hurt Salim. Anyway, good morning to you all. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me to be here, Sal. And I'm part of IAD, as well. Just to say, it's an interesting and extremely important COP because also because of the Fijian Presidency. The first time ever in the history, a small island country hosting a COP. And it's setting up examples. LBC is already talking about hosting COP, so it is changing. And then we are bringing in that moral voice to negotiations from the least developed country side, as well as small island developing states. So it's a very important COP. And Martin, you mentioned that this is like a technical kind of COP, and that is true. But we are trying to make sure that this is actually not seen as a transitional COP. We want to make sure there are a number of good decisions made here and that we don't see this as a step towards 2018 because this one is also extremely important. And coming here from the LBC's point of view, as well as supporting the expressing our full support to the Fijian Presidency, we kept with a number of expectations. And those included obviously making progress on Paris Agreement's implementation guide now, as we call it. We used to call it the rule set or the work program of the Paris Agreement, but now we call it the implementation guide. So we wanted to make sure that there is good progress in the implementation guide, which includes transparency and to some extent the accountability side and also all the other areas of work, giving guidance to the NDCs, giving guidance to adaptation communications, making adopting modalities, procedures and guidelines for global stocktake as well as the mechanism to facilitate implementation and promote compliance with the obligations on the Paris Agreement. But there are a number of other things going on. You may have heard about the Facilitative Dialogue, I'm sure you all have, that is going to take stock of where we are in terms of our temperature goal into, this is going to happen in 2018. And we are going to look at three questions, where we are, where do we have to be and how do we get there. And that includes a lot of processes and what we wanted to do here at this COP is to design that process for 2018 and make sure that that design is agreed here so that we don't go into a lot of procedural discussions. We actually get to answer those three questions through various stakeholder engagement, IPCC report and government actions as well. And we also wanted to push for the gender action plan, the adoption of the gender action plan here and the feed-gen precedence is very keen to get this done here and we moved a lot of progress. Now we have a draft decision and a good work plan that's going to be adopted here, also indigenous peoples platform, another platform where we actually bring in the practitioner side is going to be adopted here. And also very importantly, the adaptation fund discussion is extremely interesting. How do we ensure that the adaptation fund which was established under the Kyoto protocol has the resources going forward and also how do we make sure that it also served the Paris Agreement. Those are the main focus points that we have for this COP and we have made a lot of good progress. I'll stop there, but I can come back with details if you want. Thank you. Thanks very much. I will come back on a few, but I'll first continue the first round of impressions. So from your perspective, what's the first week been like and are we on track? It is. And thank you. Thank you, everybody. Having spent the week making new friends in the Bula Zone and I've met some awfully nice people. I have to say it's nice to be back with most of my people. I feel a little bit like I'm at a family reunion and it's really nice. So yeah, first impressions, as you mentioned, I've been sitting in a lot of the negotiations. I have been mostly in the Bula Zone, although I belong in the Bond Zone. And it is marked how different the atmosphere is between the two locations. And just the mood, you know, there's a real sense of optimism and communal action in the sort of Bond Zone discussions. And yet in the Bula Zone, it does still feel a little like it was 10 years ago. I suppose the key impression from this cop, as Achala said, you know, it is an important cop. And it's important we make progress because the more we do this year, the less we have to do next year. But it's also become very clear to me that there are no quick wins. And we started the week saying, oh, well, this agenda item will be easy and that will be easy. We'll wrap this up by Thursday. And actually there are a lot of still intractable issues that negotiators are struggling with. And maybe some of those old wounds that have been there for a long time, we're calling them different names perhaps, which sort of masks the fact that they haven't been resolved. But they are still proving stumbling blocks. And meanwhile, you know, a coalition of citizens in the US is driving us forward and non-state actors are in general playing a much more important role. So it does feel a little like there aren't parallel universes. That said, I do think there are grounds for optimism. I do feel that the substance of even the negotiated text is much more practical now. It's much more about action. And if I look back to, say, five or 10 years ago, I can't have even imagined that we would have agreed text on the gender action plan. That would have seemed almost insane, you know? So there are definitely grounds for optimism, but by golly, those negotiations are still difficult. Thanks very much for that initial impression. There's one thing I wanted to come back on. You mentioned, Achala, the facilitative dialogue next year, sort of prequel to the first big stock take in 2023 on the Paris Agreement that's prescribed when we really need to see whether we're on track. And that includes the three big goals of the Paris Agreement on temperature, one might say mitigation, on adaptation and on finance. Now, I hear people talking about 2018 being a very important one because we're sort of doing that for the first time a bit. But they're very different interpretations on what the scope of that will be. And you mentioned it being a facilitative dialogue about the temperature goal. Some people take that to mean it's gonna be just about mitigation. But we also know that whatever that temperature goal, however that plays out in the real world, is determined by what we do on development and adaptation. To which extent do you feel that that will be included in the discussions in 2018 and how are you setting up now to facilitate a good facilitated dialogue in the next talk? One thing we are trying to do from our perspective, from the LVC's perspective is trying to make it manageable. And there are intentionally obstructionist attempts as well to actually make it just a talk shop. The 2018 Facilitative Dialogue. As the Fijian Considency would call it, it's the Talanoa Dialogue now. We're bringing in transparent, inclusive discussion without blaming each other. But at the same time, these three questions that we are going to address in terms of where we are now, where are we how to be, and how do we get there? For us, we think it has to be focused on temperature goal rather than mitigation, just narrow focus of mitigation. And now, interestingly, this week, another matter came to force around how do we capture the pre-2020 action? How do we measure the progress of pre-2020 action? And Facilitative Dialogue has been recognized as the place where you can actually bring in the progress we have made in terms of pre-2020 action as well, which will include action on the ground, not just on mitigation, but action in relation to adaptation as well as support needed for developing countries, support provided, et cetera. So it is becoming broader, but we have to make sure that it's manageable as well. But also not allow those obstructionist people to actually make it some kind of irrelevant one-off talk shop in 2018. It is the process where we will try to bring in, or the Fijian Presidency is actually very proactive in that trying to bring in all stakeholders, not just the governments, but various stakeholders, the businesses, cities, local governments, et cetera, to have that discussion. And around that, the 2018 Governor Brown Summit is quite important, and also the climate champions work under the UNFCCC also important, and I mentioned before the IPCC report as well, so yeah. Selim, I see you wanted to come in on this. So I wanted to make a suggestion along the lines I spoke about earlier, which is that perhaps it's time for us to step up and to take out some of the burden off the shoulders of the negotiators, particularly since the negotiation process is a consensus-driven one, and hence anybody can object and you don't have progress. To a more inclusive process, maybe DNC Days 2018 is the adaptation dialogue. We bring the adaptation practitioners, we bring people from the grassroots, we bring the funders, we bring governments who are willing. So we have coalitions of the willing to push things forward, and not the obstructionists who are in the other rooms stopping anything being agreed. When you start doing negotiations on pieces of paper and text, then you can stop agreement. That's what happens. But over here, we can say what are we going to do? You may not solve the entire problem, you won't have the whole world, but you have a significant part of the people that matter to actually do adaptation, make it more effective, get the funding to do it, and we can do that. So maybe DNC Days 2018 is the adaptation dialogue. Okay, there's an interesting thought and I'll ask the others to comment on that in a minute, but first I want to welcome Ruth Spencer, who also, first of all, thank you for being with us. I know your time as negotiator is also very scarce this week. You're the negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda, a country hit particularly hard in very recent times. So first of all, thanks for being with us, I guess even taking the time to be in bond and contributing to these global dialogues is your government may have more important things to do at home in some ways at this difficult time. But also especially thank you for being here with us on this panel. Just to reverse a little bit, we have been starting to discuss what has happened in week one and how we're looking at what we can expect from week two, also a bit in the broader perspective of where we've come from Paris to bond and how we're moving forward with particularly these four lenses back on the screen that the DNC days have been applying to the climate discussions more broadly. But be keen to hear your quick impression on the negotiation so far and maybe also your personal perspective of whether that climate regime is addressing the very pressing issues that your country has been facing recently. Well first of all, I'm here as a local community NGO representative and the government has put us, has registered us on their team, so that gives us the flexibility and accommodating our inputs into the discussions. Last week we worked a lot on the gender action plan. Finally got texts and Antigua is the only Caribbean country that has submitted texts. So we are very happy that our texts were submitted also on the indigenous peoples and local community platforms. We are very active on this. We tried to see coherence with the convention, provide diversity, which has really opened up many opportunities for us. Last week I gave a presentation at the adaptation fund. We are small country limited resources, limited capabilities, but building ourselves, we got accredited adaptation fund. And what I was able to share that presentation is that the project is impacting the vulnerable marginalized groups. I actually connected the dots because a lot of people came afterwards and said you have people at the heart of your project. And I tried to bring out the coping skills even of disabled people, how they tried to cope in the midst of devastation. You know, not waiting on a government to come, but you see this half-foot man with his cold skin trying to remove the water from his skin. He has some big locks. He said, I need a chance. I need a chance, sir. And I was able to send that picture to several donor agencies that were in Antigua at the time and they funded this also. That was really a point for me. Going ahead for next week, I have to show now, I'm gonna hold a dialogue with the GCF because NGOs and local communities bring so much value to the government of Antigua and Barbuda, but we are not, we applied for readiness, but we didn't get it last year. So I'm going forward again today, showing them that as non-stake actors in a small country, capabilities exist in our communities, in our churches, in our people. And we are the one that are proactive. Once there's some notification out that this is needed, we don't even wait for the government to tell us because we are in the mailing list. We start the process, we bring the groups together and we start to draft our texts. And the government departments are so overwhelmed, you know, they are then touching every focal area. We also engage in the private sector, in the area of waste management, a key area in our NDCs. It's the NGOs that have little actions going on recycling, e-waste, petroleum oils, vegetable oils, but we're not really getting no support. So I have to be their voice here. I have to let the various, you know, parties and convention, you know, areas know that the NGOs need support. We are bringing much value added in Antigua and we are seeking to build our own capabilities with network work. I think what drives Antigua process is that we are committed and dedicated. We don't work eight to four. It's hard task is there to be done. We get it done, you know, but you have to do it over the weekend into the early morning hours. And this is the message I want, that there's the openness and full inclusion of all groups. And I'm trying to demonstrate a small island with limited resources has been doing that. Look at it as a best case and open the doors for NGOs and local communities. Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much. It's great to see the leadership of your government also putting you on that delegation and allowing you that voice also in the Bula zone. Which by the way, I've always found puzzling when I first heard these terms, the bone in the Bula zone, I thought the bone zone was going to be the bureaucratic negotiations and the Bula zone was going to be the welcoming one, the Fijian one, where we cover dialogue. So I keep getting confused. I will go, so start thinking about this. I will invite you at your tables to come back to this question of the inside out cop and maybe even us having a facilitated dialogue on adaptation here next year. And just think around your tables of whether that's a good idea and how we move that forward and maybe formulate that as questions to the panel in a minute. But there's one specific element from this topic that I think I'd like to highlight also having your perspective from Antigua and Barbuda here at the panel, but also Salim, who I know has been working hard on this, the question of loss and damage. Another five-year work plan of the Warsaw International Mechanism is being discussed here. How is the Bula zone reflecting on the realities of the climate impacts we already see today and how do you reflect on the progress of this loss and damage negotiating item? Thank you very much. Achala I'm sure will have a more inside track knowledge about what happened late last night in the negotiations. I've given up following it into the late night negotiations. But I'll say the broader picture is firstly, as Achala said, under the free Fijian presidency, this was highlighted as one of the issues that prime minister of Fiji had highlighted coming here to bomb. And then we had this devastated series of events around the world, including in the United States and in Antigua, Barbuda, that has really dipped us over into the reality of loss and damage. It's not something in the future anymore. It's happening right now. It's attributable to human-India-Islamic change, and hence we need to think about it. We have a structure. We agreed that in COP 19 in Warsaw. We have the Warsaw International Mechanism. They have an executive committee. They have a work program. So that's all fine and dandy. They're going around talking, talking, talking, getting more evidence, gathering more knowledge, all very good things. Where they haven't crossed into is yet talking about financing loss and damage, except for insurance. Insurance is very favorite of the developer. They like doing insurance, but insurance is not going to cut it alone. So we have to go beyond insurance into innovative finance for supporting loss and damage, and the negotiators as of today are not there yet. We have to push them next week so that we do get a decision on this. And to me, this is the arbiter of success in COP 23. Do we get the developed countries to move beyond insurance as the only innovative mechanism to support loss and damage? We have to go beyond that. Thank you, Steve. Are there prospective others? Yes. Like with our recent devastation, non-economic classes are so very important for us. We try to push it in the gender, couple countries didn't support it, but we have to find a way to get it in because the suffering is so much women, their lives, families, community completely displaced. Antigua, we have economic refugees. We have 3,000 people coming from Dominica. We had to move the whole country population. I'm making appeal to any donor that can assist us with transport. Antigua, we're viewed at two separate islands. And there's a limited transport capacity to take the people back to rebuild their lives. But every time the boat that carries 45 is available, it has our utility workers. It has our nods. It has our other agencies with disaster and the people that are most affected that need to go repair their houses. It's not happening. So the people are telling Antigua, the children are going to school in Antigua and their country is left there. So I'm making this appeal because we have to find a mechanism because the rebuilding process is going to take time. We need transport facilities to get the people across the island. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It also reminds us of how practical this perspective is and this is not an abstract discussion, sort of a tit for tat in negotiations about who gets how much to agree with how much of a weaker target. This is very practical. Thank you for reminding us. Can you give us an update on where we stand and then we're making progress toward what Salim sees as the litmus test for the success of COP23? Yeah, just very briefly, this is high on the agenda of the Fiji Prime Minister and also all our ministers from the Audicis sub-riff. This is also one of the high points in their briefings to be pushed forward. But I agree. I mean, the negotiations, the way we approach this issue is strong because we look at around the ground level realities, what's going on in Antigua and Barbuda, not only that, but also all the mudslides in Sierra Leone, in Asia, people suffering, et cetera. We are so disconnected from those ground level realities. We immediate thinking that comes to our negotiator's mind is the compensation and liability aspect of it. I think it is the time to forget that and that understand that the climate change is happening and that there are things happening in the ground and this is not some abstract word-related discussion. This is happening and this is something that we need to address. The way we are trying to bring in now is in addition to pushing for a more kind of a permanent, regular place for discussion, so at the moment it's a COP agenda item, which means we meet every year, only once a year we discuss about loss and damage. Also, international mechanism meets a few times a year, they come back to COP and report and we have this one place every year for negotiators to come and talk about it. So what we are trying to bring in now is a more kind of regular place under subsidiary bodies. So subsidiary body for implementation as well as scientific and technical advice to have a place to discuss this. But in addition to that, we from LDCs and also OCCs supporting this idea, trying to bring in discussion around loss and damage and modalities, procedures and guidelines on transparency and global stock take. Global stock take is to take stock of implementation, full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, which covers all the articles of the Paris Agreement, so we should not be excluding Article 8 of the Paris Agreement which talks about loss and damage. So we are saying we need to have this space everywhere. So gender action plan, we are trying to bring in loss and damage across the discussion. So finance is one as well under GCF and other bodies that negotiate finance. Thank you. Thanks, Michelle. Can I perhaps come in? I haven't been following the loss and damage discussions but I'm aware it's been difficult. The thorny issue of money. Money has always been a thorny issue. But I think what's really interesting this year is that the reasons why money is difficult this year are different maybe to previous years. And there's an acknowledgement in the system that there is money there, but we just can't reach it. And that is, I think, if I'm really honest from a personal perspective, mounting tension around the table. However, what has been really positive is that I think in the negotiations, and I will give a lot of credit here to IED, that the tone and the clarity and the approach of the LDC group in negotiations has been a breath of fresh air. Because they have not been negotiating in many cases on points of principle or old wounds. They are really bringing a practical perspective. And while everybody else is saying, well, should we replace this word with this word or whatever, typically in my experience, the LDC lead negotiator has been saying, we cannot access the money. This is a problem. We cannot access the money. I don't really care what you put in the text, but listen to us. We cannot access the money. And that is, I think, has been a really positive thing. It's almost like a halfway step to really bringing in grassroots voice. And there have been other fantastic initiatives. In fact, I should say, as the Irish government, we have a farmer from Uganda. Oh, she's here. Constance O'Collett, who's actually a member of our delegation. And she has really added value to our perspective because she has reminded us that last year's drought in Uganda destroyed livelihoods. People died. People died. Remember that. This is very real. So the money discussion, it's a bit of a pain, but it is really important. And it will always come back to it, unfortunately. Thank you. Thanks and good to hear, also, of these initiatives. And I'm also very happy to, first of all, several examples of actually people from, I would say, this world, our world, being in the Bulazzo. But also the constructive attitude of the countries that are actually at the receiving end. And I think that's the precedent that was already set, also, strongly in Paris itself, where, I think, Selim, you played an instrumental role also in getting to 1.5. We were all hopeful for the two degrees going into Paris. And then we got the 1.5 aspiration in there, as well. I think that was also this sort of very practical leadership. And I think we owe another round of applause, also, to these two leaders in particular, for having made that possible.