Bonn In comments that clearly showed his frustration at the slow pace ofnegotiations, the UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, on Monday said thatat the current rate of progress, a global agreement — adequate to address thechallenge posed by climate change — would not be possible even in the next 10years.
Countries around the world are negotiating a comprehensive globalagreement to deal with climate change. Such a deal was widely expected to bedelivered at the climate change conference in Copenhagen last December. But that was notpossible and the job had to be left for the next annual conference, in Cancun, Mexicoin November-December this year.
But little progress has been made in the intervening period since Copenhagen and nobreakthrough is expected at the ongoing mid-year talks here.
“I don’t see this process delivering adequate mitigation targets in thenext one decade,” de Boer, who is leaving his position as the executivesecretary of the United Nations Framework Convention at the end of this month,said here.
De Boer had previously sought to douse the expectations from the Cancunconference saying that a more realistic time-frame for a global deal to bepossible was 2011 climate summit in South Africaand not this year in Mexico.That comment had angered the Mexicans quite a bit.
De Boer said the commitments made by the countries after the Copenhagen meeting would only lead to a maximum of 13-14 per cent reduction in the globalgreenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 on a 1990 baseline as compared to the25-40 per cent that is believed to be the minimum that is required to avoidcatastrophic impacts of climate change.
Responding to queries related commitments made by rich countries toprovide US$ 30 billion in new and additional funds by the year 2012 to allowthe developing world adapt to adverse effects of climate change, de Boer saidthere was a “distinction between making a promise and keeping a promise”.