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| UN looks beyond Copenhagen for climate change deal |
| Betwa Sharma/PTI / United Nations Oct 27, 2009, 16:10 IST |
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With six-weeks to go for crucial Copenhagen climate change summit, the United Nations signalled it was lowering expectations on clinching a binding agreement saying it might take longer time to secure a deal.
"It is hard to say how far the conference will be able to go," Janos Pasztor, who heads the UN Chief Ban Ki-moon's Climate Change Support Team, told journalists here.
Pasztor cited US Congress still not agreeing on a climate Bill and developed nations have not agreed to fix targets to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions or funding to help developing nations to limit their discharge as reasons for keeping open sealing a deal in future negotiations.
"Climate Change is not going to be resolved in Copenhagen in the next few weeks. We always knew that. It is a long-term problem that will be with for many years if not decades to come," he added.
The scaling back by the United Nations comes after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other top UN officials have for months strived to make industrialised and developing nations to overcome their differences to get a binding agreement in Copenhagen summit in December.
UN official underlined that the time now was to concentrate on the substance of the treaty that must include ambitious targets in all areas, and these goals could be made legally binding in further sessions that could extend beyond Copenhagen.
"We have to keep pushing for as high a level of ambition as possible in both the mitigation areas as well as the financial commitment... Capture as much of the agreements as we can have... Push it as far as possible at the end of the second week in Copenhagen," he said.
Around 192 countries will meet in Danish capital in a bid to hammer out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol since the first commitment period under this treaty ends in 2012.
The meet aims at settling on a deal that effectively responds to science of climate change and limits the earth's average temperature increase to less than two degrees.
Climate talks that were wrapped up recently in Bangkok will be picked up in Barcelona next week in final set of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations before Copenhagen.
"The levels and intensity of discussions has increased at the highest levels and we expect this activity to continue to the very last minutes of the Copenhagen conference," Pasztor said.
"This is a good development as it is only governments who can make the deal and bring us success in Copenhagen," he added.
The UN chief after launching 'The Long Term Faith Commitments to Protect the Living Planet' in the first week of November will ask representatives of world faiths to take up the challenge of protecting the natural environment and respect the science of climate change.
India's stand on climate change was in tandem with what the other Asian nations want from a global deal, sought to be achieved at the UN Conference in Copenhagen in December.
India and other developing countries, including China, do not want a responsibility thrust upon them by the developed world to cut the greenhouse gases when growth is paramount in these economies to remove poverty.
The Chairman's statement at the end of the EA Summit underscored the point that different nations have to be treated differently.
"It is important to work closely to ensure that such outcome (from Copenhagen Conference) should incorporate long-term cooperative actions to address climate change in accordance with the principles ...Taking into account the principles of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities".
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