Ministers from the 47 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have met in Bhutan ahead of COP25, the international climate negotiations in Santiago, Chile in December 2019, to coordinate the LDC Group’s approach to securing a more ambitious and urgent international response to the climate crisis. At the meeting in Thimphu, technical negotiators and Ministers discussed key issues to be addressed at COP25 and set out their common priorities in the Thimphu LDC Ministerial Communiqué on Climate Change 2019. These priorities include the need for COP25 to deliver increased ambition through new and updated NDCs by early 2020; robust Article 6 rules on markets that ensure environmental integrity and overall mitigation in global emissions; a strengthened action-oriented Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage that continues to serve both the Convention and Paris Agreement; and scaled-up finance for adaptation, mitigation, and to address loss and damage, and that delivers by 2020 the $100 billion per year goal.   Addressing the meeting, H.E. Sherub Gyeltshen, Bhutan’s Minister of Home and Cultural Affairs, said “The world cares about what we say, what we ask for and what we do in our countries.  We therefore have the moral ground to call for stronger and ambitious action on climate change – and that’s exactly what we will be doing in Santiago.” Despite contributing negligible greenhouse gas emissions, the least developed countries are among the worst affected by climate change, with the least capacity to address its impacts. The Chair of the LDC Group at the Ministerial level, H.E Yeshey Penjor, said “Failure to achieve the 1.5°C goal means that vulnerable countries like ours would have to deal with many more climate induced disasters. Islands are at risk of going under water and mountains are at risk of going without water. The world must act and act urgently." Mr. Sonam P. Wangdi, Chair of the LDC Group in climate negotiations, said “This meeting has been a valuable opportunity to bring together Ministers from the least developed countries to strategise and prepare for COP25. Our countries are united behind the science in their unwavering commitment to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. For many of our people the achievement of these goals is a matter of life or death – but we know we can’t reach them alone. The global response must be ambitious, it must be fair, and it must be effective.”