AFP/Getty Images Just as Europe tries to inject new life in the climate change debate with an analysis of the impact of more ambitious CO2 cuts within the 27 countries, the United Nations is struggling to find enough money to organize talks ahead of the next international negotiation in Mexico at the end of the year.
“I set a deadline for the end of this week to get clarification on financial pledges, because (…) I can only spend money I have on my bank account,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, during a press conference on the first day of a two-week negotiating stretch in Bonn, Germany.
The UNFCCC organizes the international talks that seek a deal to limit global warming and avoid irreversible changes to the climate and the environment.
De Boer said that many countries have pledged money to finance the organization of two other meetings to prepare for the big Mexico negotiating round at the end of the year, but not enough promises have yet materialized to allow for it.
The Cancun meeting will be a second chance to push forward the effort to cut carbon emissions, after about 190 governments met last December in Copenhagen with the aim of agreeing an international accord to fight climate change. But that meeting delivered only a vague and non binding deal among some countries, a result that de Boer has described as “a muffin,” a very modest confection compared with the more elaborate ”multilayer cake” complete with lighted candle that he had expected.
