BackClimate talks accelerating, says UN
Climate talks accelerating, says UN
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Accra: “A six-day round of talks yielded good progress in important areas towards a global agreement for tackling climate change," the UN said here on Wednesday.
According to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “The meeting in the Ghanaian capital “has provided the basis for real negotiations" in December."
“The process has speeded up and governments are becoming very serious about negotiating a result," de Boer said at a final press conference adding that he is seeing a growing sense of urgency towards the cause.
“People are aware that time is running out, that we have just a little more than a year until an agreement has to be reached," he said.
The Accra meeting is the third in the “Bali Roadmap" — a two-year course of haggling among 192 nations over how to tackle the worsening threat of global warming.
The goal is to complete a draft treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009 to curb the greenhouse gases that cause the problem, and to channel funds, technology and expertise to poor countries likely to bear the brunt of climate change.
The accord will be the most complex and ambitious environmental deal ever attempted.
Several rounds of talks this year have concentrated on whittling down the sprawling agenda and on identifying areas to focus on.
Negotiations are expected to start in earnest this December, at a ministerial-level meeting in Poznan, Poland.
De Boer said: “The Accra talks, which took place at the level of senior officials and experts, had fostered ‘encouraging debate’ on forest conservation."
Deforestation accounts for roughly a fifth of annual greenhouse—gas emissions.
There had also been useful proposals for widening a key UNFCCC tool, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), to spur help for African countries, and countries had put forward ideas for financial aid for adapting to climate change.
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