UN convention on climate change sets roadmap for Copenhagen meet in 2009

13 Dec 2008

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Poznan, Poland: A global forum on climate change ended Saturday agreeing on a working schedule that would ultimately result in a historic pact aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. The 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set down a schedule that would ultimately conclude with a historic pact in Copenhagen next December.

The pact, due to take effect after 2012, will aim at setting out unprecedented measures for curbing carbon emissions and also helping poor countries caught in the rapidly changing patterns of food cultivation resulting from climate change.

"Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action," said Polish environment minister Maciej Nowicki, who was the chairperson for the meet.

UNFCCC members will now submit their proposals for inclusion in the main body of the treaty's text in the early part of 2009. The main points would then be distilled and by June a blueprint would be readied which will eventually form the basis for negotiations.

Observers identified the two main issues that emerged at the meet as, firstly, which countries should make the biggest sacrifices on curbing greenhouse gases, and, secondly, how to compensate poor countries exposed to the fallout of climate change.

The 12-day meet ended with a two-day ministerial-level gathering which, say observers, failed to advance negotiations on these core issues.

The meet, however, did open the way to launching a so-called Adaptation Fund for helping poor countries most exposed to the vagaries of changing weather patterns, such as rising sea levels, drought and floods. But no concrete proposals were agreed upon as to how funds would be apportioned to the fund intended to help tackle the fallout of changing weather patterns.

News that the European Union (EU) summit in Brussels had agreed to slash EU emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 was a positive development that occurred alongside the summit meet.

The final day of the Poznan talks also received its glamour quotient with Al Gore, 2007 co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and US senator John Kerry, acting as pointsman for President-elect Barack Obama making an appearance. Gore, in particular, vowed to root out the heart of George W. Bush's policies on climate change.

"Our home, Earth, is in danger," Gore told a packed hall.

"We are moving towards several tipping points that could within less than 10 years make it impossible to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilisation -- unless we act quickly."

The EU's "20-20-20" deal seeks to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, make 20 per cent savings in energy consumption and bring renewable energy sources up to 20 per cent of total energy use.

Such commitments make the plan the most ambitious amongst all the major economies and set an example for other major economies such as those of the United States, Japan and other rich countries to emulate at next year's negotiations at Copenhagen.

Though rich countries acknowledge their historic role in creating the gashouse problem they argue that emerging powers like China and India too need to take steps to curb carbon pollution.

Developing nations argue that the industrialised world ought to pay the bills for costly technologies that creating clean-energy involves.

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