The red line came in the contact group: the United States opposes any instrument, binding or voluntary, arguing drought is a national and bilateral matter, Down To Earth reported from the venue on Wednesday. Pushback runs wide: the African Group opposes fragmentation, Brazil and the EU want a concrete decision this week, and Chile has floated a voluntary pilot implementation mechanism as a bridge.
The state of the text is on the record. The Earth Negotiations Bulletin's water-day issue, out Wednesday morning, has the presidency running bilaterals from Monday night through Tuesday and the drought decision “hanging by a thread.”
The finance ledger keeps growing while the rule does not.
Central Asia is speaking in windows and mechanisms. Kyrgyzstan proposed “a mutually beneficial compensation mechanism for regional water use,” the bulletin records: the construction Bishkek has pushed since spring, over Kazakh and Uzbek objections that predate this conference. Russia, for its part, objected to the convention's next strategic framework citing the exclusion of experts from Central Asian nations, per Montsame.
The succession question closed. Egypt will host COP18 in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2028, water minister Hani Sewilam said, and will push for “a legally binding drought protocol.” One outlet, Daily News Egypt, carried it on Wednesday.
The finance ledger keeps growing while the rule does not. ADB's FIELD initiative promised at least $2 billion to 2035 on Tuesday, joining the EIB's €200 million and the World Bank's $100 million for Mongolia's forests, against the $278 billion a year the finance day named as the gap.
The presidency has two days to write a text between a red line and a binding ambition. The host inheriting whatever survives has said which side it is on.