Thursday 20 March 2008

UN climate chief warns Bangkok meeting must deliver

www.carbon-financeonline.com
12 March, 2008

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer has warned that upcoming UN talks in Bangkok must reach agreement on a detailed work plan, if the world is to meet the Bali roadmap deadline of endorsing a new global pact at Copenhagen in 2009. "What worries me a bit personally is that, although we have two years until Copenhagen, actually our first meeting in Bangkok, which has to agree the work programme, is happening in early April," de Boer told Carbon Finance.

"So that means the first three months of those two years are gone. And secondly, to be able to sign off on something in Copenhagen, it presumably needs to be available on paper some time before. So the actual amount of time that we have available is considerably less than a full two years," he said. "That in turn implies that the Bangkok meeting is really going to have to do what it is supposed to do, which is map out the programme of work that is going to make a Copenhagen agreement possible," de Boer said.

The Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention and the Ad-hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol are set to meet in Bangkok from March 31 to 4 April. As well as "identifying which items will be discussed [and] when", the Bangkok meeting will need to identify the issues that need further clarification, he said.

"For example, the Bali language talks about real, measurable and verifiable action by rich and poor countries alike. One question is, who is going to be doing the measuring and who is going to be doing the verifying? The Bali language talks about comparable effort on the part of rich countries. How do you determine what is comparable effort?"

De Boer said government representatives at the Bangkok meeting would also need to decide what input they want from intergovernmental organisations, the private sector and civil society.

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