UN climate official quits

The Telegraph , Friday, February 19, 2010
Correspondent :
Amsterdam, Feb. 18 (AP): Top UN climate change official Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press today that he was resigning after nearly four years, a period when governments struggled without success to agree on a new global warming deal.

His departure takes effect on July 1, five months before 193 nations are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt to reach a binding worldwide accord on controlling greenhouse gases.

De Boer’s resignation adds to the uncertainty that a full treaty can be finalised there.

De Boer is known to be deeply disappointed with the outcome of the last summit in Copenhagen, which drew 120 world leaders but failed to reach more than a vague promise by countries to limit carbon emissions — and even that deal fell short of consensus.

But he denied to the AP that his decision to quit was a result of frustration with Copenhagen.

“Copenhagen wasn’t what I had hoped it would be,” he acknowledged, but the summit nonetheless prompted governments to submit plans and targets for reigning in the emissions primarily blamed for global warming.

“I think that’s a pretty solid foundation for the global response that many are looking for,” he said. De Boer recommended the next talks take a different tack. Rather than convene several negotiating sessions involving nearly 200 countries, Mexico, which is chairing the negotiations throughout this year, should prepare the November conference to work in smaller groups.

The Mexicans should “engage more intensively early in the process, so that you don’t only rely on formal meetings but through bilateral contacts and frequent meetings in a smaller setting and an earlier understanding of how the process can be advanced”, he told AP.

“At the moment, it tends to be very much a stop-and-start affair with everything concentrated in the formal negotiations, where I think a much more continuous engagement by (Mexico) is needed.”

The partial agreement reached in Copenhagen, brokered by Obama, “was very significant”, he said. But he acknowledged frustration that the deal was merely “noted” rather than formally adopted by all countries.

“We were about an inch away from a formal agreement. It was basically in our grasp, but it didn’t happen,” he said. “So that was a pity.”

The media-savvy former Dutch civil servant and climate negotiator was widely credited with raising the profile of climate issues through his frequent press encounters and his backstage lobbying of world leaders.

But his constant travel and frenetic diplomacy failed to bridge the suspicions and distrust between developing and industrial countries that barred the way to a final agreement at the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

People who know de Boer say he was more disheartened by the snail-paced negotiations than he was ready to admit. “I saw him at the airport after Copenhagen,” said Jake Schmidt, a climate expert for the US-based Natural Resources Defence Council. “He was tired, worn out.”

 
SOURCE : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100219/jsp/foreign/story_12124390.jsp
 


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