19 September
2008-United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon has appointed two new Special Envoys
on climate change, an issue he has made
one of his top priorities.
Former Botswanan president
Festus Mogae and Srgjan Kerim, who has just
stepped down as president of the UN General
Assembly, join two other special envoys
for climate change appointed last year:
former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos and
Norwegian ex-prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.
Their role will be to
support the Secretary-General in his consultations
with heads of state and governments as well
as other key stakeholders, in order to facilitate
progress in the ongoing multilateral talks
on climate change.
The next round of negotiations
of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) takes place in the Polish
city of Poznan in December, in the run-up
to the key climate change talks in Copenhagen
in December 2009.
Mr. Ban says he hopes
the envoys will be able to promote positive
steps towards reaching an "ambitious,
comprehensive, inclusive and ratifiable"
pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose
first commitment period ends in 2012.
Festus Mogae, who was
president of Botswana from 1998 until earlier
this year, has extensive experience in economics
and development planning, having also served
as his country's Minister of Finance and
Development Planning and in the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
As President of the
General Assembly's 62nd session, which ended
on Monday, Srgjan Kerim chaired three thematic
debates on climate change. Mr Kerim also
served as the foreign minister of the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
