UN climate chief quits

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced today.

De Boer, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said.

The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, widely seen as either a disappointment or a chaotic failure.

The UNFCCC, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit, gathers 194 nations in the search for combating the causes of man-made climate change and easing its effects.

Its key achievement is the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires curbs in heat-stoking greenhouse gases blamed for disrupting the climate system.