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Varying views mar climate change conference

By on April 12, 2011

THE United Nations climate change conference that ended in Bangkok on Friday ended with grey areas that were not agreed upon by governments that attended the conference, thus leaving a yearning gap and questions on the possibility of the Durban conference in December to resolve them.

Rising on the final day of the conference in Bangkok, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, said that while there were positive and constructive sides of the meeting, it also brought out the divisions between governments that needed to be resolved in the course of the year in order to have a fruitful deliberation in Durban in December.

One of the issues governments discussed in Bangkok was the future of the Kyoto Protocol. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
With 194 parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC parties. The conference was attended by about 2000 participants from 175 countries, including government delegates, representatives from business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.

“Discussions in Bangkok under the Kyoto Protocol shifted focus on what should happen with regard to the future of the protocol to how it would happen,” Ms. Figueres said, adding that, “it is significant that there is a strong desire to build on the Kyoto rules and a desire to find a political solution in 2011.”

Ms. Figueres said that most developed countries had focused on the implementation of the Cancun agreements, while developing countries put a stronger emphasis on resolving issues not agreed on in Cancun, including the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

“Governments are conscious that a middle ground is needed to reassure all sides, and that means capturing unfinished tasks resulting from the action plan agreed on in Bali in 2007, as well as clarity on tasks agreed on in Cancun,” Ms. Figueres said.

“Governments now need to use the common understanding reached in Bangkok to initiate work at the next session, and from now on, time must be used wisely,” she added.

source : Tribune