11/04/2011 - The top
United Nations climate change official on
Friday (April 8) urged countries to work
harder for further progress on combating
global warming this year, saying there were
positive discussions on the Kyoto Protocol
on greenhouse gas emission reduction at
this week's meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.
"Discussions in
Bangkok under the Kyoto Protocol importantly
included not only a focus on what should
happen with regard to the future of the
protocol but also how it will happen",
said Christiana Figueres, the Executive
Secretary of the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), at the end of
the six-day meeting.
"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", she added.
The Kyoto Protocol is
an addition to the UNFCCC that contains
legally binding measures to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, and whose first commitment
period is due to expire next year. Negotiations
on the second commitment phase of the Protocol
continue.
Picking up on the climate
change agreements reached in Cancún,
Mexico, last year, governments began organizing
their work for 2011 in Bangkok, including
activities under the long-term cooperative
action negotiating track of the convention,
which brings countries together to decide
collective solutions to climate change.
The UN climate change
talks in Cancún concluded with a
package of decisions to help countries advance
towards a low-emissions future. Dubbed the
"Cancún Agreements", the
decisions included formalizing climate change
mitigation pledges and ensuring increased
accountability for them, as well as taking
concrete action to protect the world's forests.
Figueres said that while
developed countries were mainly focused
on addressing the implementation of the
Cancún Agreements, developing countries
wanted to ensure that those issues that
were not resolved in Cancún yet are
part of the comprehensive Bali Action Plan
that governments agreed to in 2007 are dealt
with in a balanced way.
The result of this year's
work will culminate at the UN Climate Change
Conference in Durban, South Africa, at the
end of this year.
"What is clear
from this week is that in Durban, governments
will address both the work to complete what
was agreed in Cancún and the work
which Cancún left unresolved",
said Figueres.
The Bangkok meeting
was officially the first week of a three-week
session, which will resume in Bonn, Germany,
on June 6.
Figueres pointed out
that while Cancún was a significant
step, meeting the long-term challenge of
climate change requires increasingly strong
international agreements, backed by national
policies that give incentives to 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 back up
collective action with strong domestic policies",
she added.
The Bangkok meeting
was attended by around 2,000 participants
from 175 countries, including government
delegates, representatives from business
and industry, environmental organizations
and research institutions.
Source: UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
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Minister Izabella debates
sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro
29/04/2011 - The UN
Conference on Sustainable Development, known
as Rio+20, to be held in June 2012 in Brazil,
is the theme of a debate this Friday (April
29) in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The event
will be co-chaired by the Minister of the
Environment, Izabella Teixeira, and the
Minister of External Relations, Antonio
Patriota.
This will be the first
meeting of a series of encounters between
representatives of the government and different
sectors of society, aimed at the construction
of Brazilian thought for the conference.
The debate will also
be attended by the Executive Director of
the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), Achim Steiner.
