Amid claims of progress in climate change talks, at-risk nations harden demands
Comments offThe UN’s top climate-change official says the negotiations underway in Copenhagen are making progress in some areas.
He also backed the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, whose future is uncertain as nations are divided over whether is should remain.
Meanwhile the world’s most vulnerable nations are piling pressure on other countries to strike an effective deal.
Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said negotiators had advanced talks on how to transfer technologies from industrialised to developing nations once the necessary finance is in place.
In a press conference yesterday, de Boer said the proposed technology mechanism would establish an executive body responsible for accelerating action on technology development and transfer.
It would also create a new consultative network for climate technologies.
He announced that negotiators have two days left before government ministers begin to arrive on Saturday, when the president of the conference will take stock of progress so far.
He also addressed the question of the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which has been the subject of heated debate here.
Industrialised countries would like to see the Kyoto Protocol merged into a new agreement while developing countries want it to endure with a new set of commitments for industrialised countries.
“The Kyoto Protocol will and must survive,” said de Boer. “It is the only legally binding instrument we have to act on climate change.”
Meanwhile negotiators more than half the world’s countries – the ones most at risk from climate change – are hardening their demands for an ambitious deal.
They say they are determined not to sign any deal that allows temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as opposed to 2 degrees Celsius, which the major economies would prefer.
Any agreement to reach the more ambitious target would require massive and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions combined with removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
As the talks head towards their second week, protesters are continuing to put pressure on developed countries such as the United States and the European Union members to take serious actions in making the climate deal successful.
The diverse array of protestors includes environmentalists, vulnerable indigenous communities and activists from small island states that are in serious danger due to rising seas.
