UNFCCC Opening Remarks A Call To Urgent Action
Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), opened the Poznań session with a request of the entire assembly to work swiftly to achieve the vast goals ahead of it for this session.
“You have one year to go before Copenhagen, and the clock is ticking!” he said.
The half-way mark leading to landmark legislation that will be established in 2009 (to take effect in 2013) that will establish an international response to climate change, the two-week meeting in Poland is the fourteenth Conference of the 192 Parties of the UNFCCC and the fourth meeting of the 183 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
Among the many objectives ahead for the conference, de Boer encouraged the Parties to:
- Provide political impetus to the remaining work and focus on issues to move forward and negotiate in 2009.
- Discuss ranges of emission reductions for industrialized countries, who need to show they are “willing to shift gear and take on the leadership role in emission reductions.”
In 2007, Parties agreed to consider a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction range of minus 25 to 40 percent over 1990 levels, a range which could be confirmed at Poznań.
Another key question includes how to raise the capital needed to deliver the financing and technology to bolster the green growth necessary to hit the targets for the Kyoto Protocol and beyond, especially in developing countries. “The financial crisis will impact your work as it will many aspects of our lives,” said de Boer. He also noted that, while creating the funding required will be challenging, the Parties need to “focus on how the climate change regime could become self-financing and to link climate change policies to economic recovery.”
The UNFCCC comes at a time where growing concern over the effects of man-made climate change is stretching across the globe. According to de Boer, 90 percent of “young people” recently surveyed in Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and the U.S. appealed to leaders to “do everything in their power” to deal with climate change.
