CLIMATE CHANGE: Four Tough Nuts To Crack

BONN (IPS) – The world is on track towards negotiating a solid deal in Copenhagen at the end of this year, Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, told reporters at the opening of a 12-day conference in Bonn Monday.

“The political moment is right to reach an agreement,” said De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC). “There is no doubt in my mind that the Copenhagen climate conference in December is going to lead to a result.”

If the world has learnt anything from the financial crisis, he said, “it is that global issues require a global response.” He added, however that “there are some tough nuts to crack” and that success in Copenhagen requires “delivery on four political essentials.”

The four essentials, as he termed them, are: clarity on how much industrialised countries would reduce their emissions up to 2020; clarity on what developing countries would do to limit the growth of their emissions; stable finance from industrialised nations for the developing world to mitigate climate change and adapt; and a “governance regime”.

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