De Boer: Copenhagen Accord Gives World Tools for Treaty

By: Margaret Ryan, Published: 01/20/10 1:58pm

Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC

The Copenhagen climate convention didn't produce a cake, but it gave the world's nations the ingredients to bake one, and that culinary effort will proceed in at least two, and probably more, negotiating meetings this year.

That's according to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, speaking to reporters today in Bonn, Germany.

De Boer said the world's in a "cooling-off period" after the intense negotiations at Copenhagen, which failed to produce a new treaty but did at the last minute eke out the "Copenhagen Accord." That document was negotiated among about 30 nations but finalized by the U.S., China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Its creators represent about 80% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

De Boer said the Accord is "anchored in the (UN Framework) Convention" and, with its pledges to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and take fast action on helping the most exposed populations adapt to climate change, gives negotiators a path forward for a more formal deal this year.

The Accord specifies that countries should affiliate with the accord, and specify what they plan to do to attack climate change, by Jan. 31. De Boer said he knows not all countries are prepared to do that by the end of the month, and he considers the date "a soft deadline." He expects countries to affiliate through the coming year.

De Boer said he has heard no sentiment from countries to make the Copenhagen Accord yet another negotiating track in the complex climate treaty talks. Rather, he said, they see it as an important tool to advance both existing tracks. One of those tracks would extend the Kyoto Protocol, while the other would specify actions outside the protocol, particularly by the U.S., which will not sign Kyoto.

De Boer says he'll meet next month with Mexican President Felipe Calderon about how to take the negotiating process forward in 2010, to the formal conference scheduled at year's end in Mexico City. He said one interim meeting is planned, in Bonn in late May-early June, but he's hearing calls for more meetings to be scheduled, particularly in the last half of the year, to try to get agreements ahead of the next conference.