Extra UN Climate Change Talks scheduled in April

22 February 2010, Oslo, Norway

After falling short on signing a legally binding, post-2012 agreement at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UNFCCC in Copenhagen in December 2009, nations now agreed to hold another session with senior government officials in Bonn from 9-11 April. The meeting will be preceded by regional groups' consultations on 8 April and feature a limited number of exhibitions and side events.

The Copenhagen Summit had yielded a last-minute compromise deal, but it failed to get official backing from the entire forum. The so-called Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius, but does not spell out the means for achieving this objective, such as obligatory emission reduction targets.

"The negotiations are picking up speed again after Copenhagen," said Lykke Friis, Danish Minister of Climate and Energy and President of the Conference of the Parties (COP). At the first formal meeting since Copenhagen, she stated that “there was a positive and constructive atmosphere and all parties were eager to move forward with the negotiations".

 

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer stated that "Following the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this constitutes a quick return to the negotiations [...] The decision to intensify the negotiating schedule underlines the commitment by governments to move the negotiations forward towards success in Cancun". "This is further strengthened by the fact that the number of countries that have written to the secretariat with their country communications since Copenhagen has now exceeded a landmark one hundred, he added.

The meeting adds to the two other scheduled dates in the UNFCCC calendar this year:

  • On 31 May to 11 June 2010, there will be another meeting of senior officials in Bonn, Germany.
  • The next Conference of the Parties (COP 16) will take place from 29 November to 10 December 2010 in Mexico.

Friis said she was unsure if U.N. talks would end this year with a new U.N. treaty to combat global warming and succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. "We are working for an agreement in Cancun but it's too early to say," she said. Read more…