Cancun Climate Talks Can Yield ‘Significant’ Accords, UN Says
The next round of climate-change talks, beginning Nov. 29 in Cancun, Mexico, can produce “significant” progress on forest protection, aid for developing nations and technology sharing, a senior United Nations official said.
“There are enough issues that are close enough to resolution that an important outcome could be achieved,” UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr told reporters in New York. “It is our assessment that significant progress is possible.”
Almost 200 nations will try to forge a deal to limit greenhouse gases blamed for climate change that eluded last year’s meeting in Copenhagen. They failed to reach a binding agreement to set a framework for greenhouse-gas reduction when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
Instead, the Copenhagen meeting yielded a political accord calling for $100 billion a year by 2020 to fund climate efforts in poorer nations. The countries also vowed to stop global temperature increases at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in pre-industrial times.
Orr, director of policy planning for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said that, while “expectations for Copenhagen were huge, we are at a different point today.” As no broad-based accord will be reached, the “order of the day is pragmatism” and negotiators should “make progress where we can on the issues we can,” he said.
Talks since Copenhagen on forest protection, climate aid and technology sharing have left those issues “ripe” for agreement in Cancun, Orr said. “We encourage all parties to push the last few inches across the finish line.”
‘Set of Understandings’
The UN is seeking a “set of understandings on cooperation” to curb destruction of forests, which accounts for 20 percent of manmade carbon dioxide emissions, Orr said.
On providing technology to developing nations to mitigate the impacts of climate change, Orr said the UN hopes for “concrete” agreement on that process, including creation of “regional centers” to facilitate transfers.
The third area of possible progress is agreement on disbursing $10 billion a year in aid to developing nations to finance their climate change mitigation measures. This so-called “fast-start” funding was agreed to at Copenhagen.
“We need a package of decisions and outcomes,” Orr said of the Cancun talks.
Laurence Graff, head of international relations unit at the European Commission’s climate department, also said last month that agreement in those three areas is “within reach” at Cancun. “We need to be ambitious but realistic and manage expectations so that we can lay the ground for action and provide a good milestone for an international regime that would be finalized later,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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