Time running out for climate change deal, says UN official
Time was running out today for agreement on a road map towards a new international deal on global warming, the UN’s top climate official warned.
Executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer said he was “very concerned at the pace of things” as a group of ministers met in a bid to thrash out differences over the text of the agenda for a deal which it is hoped will be agreed in 2009.
He said there were a number of issues still outstanding – including disagreement on whether to include a reference to 25-40% emissions cuts for developed countries by 2020.
He set a deadline of noon tomorrow for the issues to be ironed out, to give officials time to translate, photocopy and circulate the road map so people could consider it.
Mr de Boer warned that they were in an “all or nothing situation” in which agreement had to be found on the road map or the “whole house of cards” of the negotiations during the past two weeks would fall to pieces.
Of the inclusion of the targets, he said: “We just have to wait and see where this goes, it’s very clear some people are uncomfortable with that paragraph, for example the US.
“If the numbers remain in one form or another we will have achieved more than I expected out of this meeting,” he added.
And he warned that if no agreement – which at the least should be a decision to launch negotiations on a new emissions deal and an end date for reaching that agreement – was made, the world could not afford another set of meetings to restart the process.
He said the scientific reports on the threat of dangerous climate change produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was still fresh in everybody’s mind, spurring on political action.
“I don’t think you can carry that kind of scientific urgency and building block momentum. It’s very difficult to put something in the fridge for six months and hope it hasn’t passed its sell-by date,” he warned.
