Bangkok, 8 April 2011
- On the final day of the UN Climate Change
Conference in Bangkok (3-8 April), UNFCCC
Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres
said that while positive and constructive,
the meeting in Thailand had also highlighted
continuing divisions between governments
that needed to be resolved in the course
of the year in order to come to a strong
outcome in Durban in December.
A central issue governments
discussed in Bangkok was the future of the
Kyoto Protocol, which includes the only
current international set of accounting
rules to protect environmental integrity.
The first commitment period of the Kyoto
Protocol expires in 2012.
"Discussions in
Bangkok under the Kyoto Protocol importantly
shifted from a focus on what should happened
with regard to the future of the protocol
to how it will happen," Ms. Figueres
said. "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.
Picking up on the climate
change agreements reached in Cancun at the
end of last year, governments began organising
their work of 2011 in Bangkok. Ms. Figueres
said that most developed countries had focussed
on the implementation of the Cancun Agreements,
whilst developing countries put a stronger
emphasis on resolving issues not agreed
in Cancun, including the future of the Kyoto
Protocol.
"Governments are
conscious a middle ground is needed to reassure
all sides, and that means capturing unfinished
tasks resulting from the action plan agreed
in Bali in 2007, as well as clarity on tasks
agreed in Cancun," Ms. Figueres said.
"Governments now need to use the common
understandings reached in Bangkok to initiate
work at the next session and from now on,
time must be used wisely," she added.
In order to achieve
clarity on the emission reduction pledges
of countries, an important workshop took
place in Bangkok on industrialised country
emission reduction targets and the conditions
for meeting them. Another workshop was held
on developing country mitigation actions,
looking at what these actions mean and what
level of support they might need.
An expert workshop on
the Technology Mechanism agreed in Cancun
also took place in Thailand, looking into
practical issues such as what the network
should look like, who should be included
in it, and how effective participation of
relevant institutions be ensured.*
Ms. Figueres pointed
that meeting the long-term challenge of
climate change required increasingly strong
international agreements, backed by national
policies that incentivise all sides to take
aggressive and collective action on a global
scale.
"The UNFCCC is
the place where governments have committed
to act together on climate change,"
she said. "At home, under their different
political systems, they need to create the
right policies to do so. This is not an
'either/or' choice, it has to be a package.
No country can hope to go it alone,"
she emphasized.
The UN Climate Change
Conference in Bangkok has been attended
by around two thousand participants from
175 countries, including government delegates,
representatives from business and industry,
environmental organisations and research
institutions. It is conceptually the first
part of a three-week session, which will
resume in Bonn, Germany, on 6 June 2011.
*An overview of government
presentations given at the mitigation and
technology workshops can be found at:
About the UNFCCC
With 194 Parties, the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change
(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.
Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting
of highly industrialized countries and countries
undergoing the process of transition to
a market economy, have legally binding emission
limitation and reduction commitments. The
ultimate objective of both treaties is to
stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations
in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent
dangerous human interference with the climate
system.
